against evilly disposed "Yakkás," wild buffalos, elephants, and bears. They do not fear snakes, nor have they antidotes nor methods of cure for snake-bites. In this respect they differ from the jungle tribes of India. The Veddahs think that the snakes are restrained from hurting them by the "Yakkás"; but if a "Yakká " is offended, a snake may be permitted to do mischief. The person wounded will then die unless the devil-dancer is able to obtain pardon for him.

The Veddahs do not exhibit outside their huts any skulls, bones feathers, or skins of animals and birds killed in the chase, or deceased in the village, as is sometimes done in parts of India. The fact is, they scarcely exhibit emotion, and appear to be stoically indifferent to most impressions. There is nothing in their habits to show that they have at any time risen above the condition of a savage tribe of hunters.

Currency has been given to the idea that early in the history of the Sinhalese the Veddahs were regarded as of high "caste”; and it is recorded that a king of Ceylon married a Veddah "princess." It is quite possible that to conciliate the primitive inhabitants of the island, and to use their labour in the construction of large irrigation works, and to avail themselves of the knowledge the jungle tribes possessed of the water-courses, the early kings may have professed to treat the Veddahs with a certain amount of respect, but there is nothing in their habits and social observances which would entitle them to consideration among "caste" Hindoos; indeed, rather the reverse. It is stated that King Dutegemunu in 160 B.C. appointed the Veddahs servants of the God Skanda in the temple of Katarugama Dewule built by him, but that this was done, as alleged, "on account of the purity of their caste," may well be doubted; probably, rather for the convenience of the moment. An analogous case occurs in the history of the Rameshwaram Temple, when the chief of an aboriginal people in the Ramnad district bordering the Paumben Channel was made "lord of the Causeway" by the Pandyan King of Madura, because he happened to be in the vicinity and was able to supply help to the pilgrims, and labour for the repairs of the great temple, and of the numerous small shrines that lined the approach to it. A Hindoo of "caste" would regard the Veddah of to-day with disdain, owing to his neglect of cleanliness, his want of discrimination in diet, his indifference to religious ceremonial, and his admission without prejudice of aliens to marriage with his women. It is not likely, from what is known of the Veddah of to-day, that he has become degenerate from his

original type. The influences to which he has been subjected would rather have tended to improve him. The conclusion is that the Veddahs have only been wild hunters, as the name implies, and no more, and that they experienced exceptional treatment from the early kings who came from India, rather from the singularity of their characteristics than from the "purity of their caste."

In their family lives as well as in the social arrangements of their small communities the character of the Veddahs is attractive from the mildness and docility exhibited. If there be no great demonstration of affection there is gentleness of treatment of husbands with their wives and parents with their children. Marriage takes place early. The physical structure of the girl, in the early stages of puberty, is held to render union more attractive than at a later age. This feeling is indeed common throughout India too, and children of tender years have had to be protected from undue license by legislation. It is hinted that in North Central Ceylon Veddah girls are "married" at eight years of age, and boys at twelve years, but the word has probably been misused for "betrothed," for they do not live together as a rule in any tribe before puberty. In Bintenne the ages are given respectively as thirteen and eighteen years; and this information, afforded by the local rate Mahatmya, or headman, agrees rather with the result of personal inquiry by the writer, who was told that the marriageable age of a girl was from ten to twelve years.

The young man who would marry a girl places his bow and arrows against the door of her father's hut. If the proposal thus signified is approved, the parents of the youth with the latter attend at the girl's house with presents of monkey-meat, honey, venison, yams, or such food as may be available, and the bride is presented by the bridegroom with a piece of cloth seven cubits in length. He remains with her that night. Next day the bride and her family attend at the young man's house, with some other elderly people, and the bride is left in her future abode. There is no further ceremony; the union is simply witnessed. The girls are modest to strangers. They do not willingly expose themselves to view, and if pressed to do so stand silent with averted face, and their eyes fixed upon the ground. Adultery is not common. Polyandry is unknown. But both have been practised, it is said, when the people have had the bad example of the Kandyans before them.

When families have suffered isolation in the forest, marriage has taken place between brothers and younger sisters; with the eldest sister it is considered unchaste. Marriage between father and daughter has been known. Such alliances as these do not appear to

be usually practised, and would seem to have been due to stress of circumstances.

There is no ceremony performed at the time of child-birth, but the mother puts a necklace upon the child during the time it is suckled-for about eighteen months-to defend it from evil "Yakkás," or otherwise, as in India, to avert the "Evil Eye." The children remain unclothed for several years.

The majority of the Veddahs are said to be short-lived. To attain sixty-five years of age is uncommon. The information furnished from the north central and the Bintenne districts show that sickness is quickly diminishing their numbers.

The Veddahs have been said to bury their dead wrapped in the skins of animals, and those present would on such occasions partake of food-the roast flesh of a monkey or iguana with honey and roots. Inquiry to-day does not bear out these notions. In Wellasse, bordering on the Bintenne district, no ceremonies are observed. In the latter locality the Veddahs are said formerly to have thrown the dead into the jungle or left them where they died. In one part of Bintenne the writer was told that the hut occupied by the dead person was burnt over the corpse. In the Aniradapura province (presumably to the eastward, where the Veddahs are found) a native official who knows their habits states, "6 as soon as life is extinct three or four able-bodied men go into the jungle and dig a hole almost knee-deep with pointed sticks, wrap the corpse in a mat, tie it up to a pole with the face upwards, and depositing the corpse in the hole, cover it with earth." Females do not attend the burial. On the seventh day after death a space is cleared near their huts, they collect the fibre of the Velan and Halmilla trees, and the branches of a tree called Dummah, and decorate it for the devildancer, who performs there from one evening until the next. The object is to induce the spirit of the dead person to join those which have gone before, and to prevent it from visiting the living. But this practice does not appear to obtain in Bintenne.

As regards the attempts made to impart religious instruction to the Veddahs, it would appear that they have not been wholly successful. Mr. Gillings, writing in 1849 in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Ceylon, states that up to the year 1844, in Bintenne, 163 men, forty-eight women, and eighty-five children had been baptized, but had since relapsed into their former habits. It seemed doubtful if they had any conception of God. These early efforts seem to have been due to the Rev. R. Stott, of the Wesleyan Mission. He was accompanied in his first visit by Mr. Atherton, of VOL. CCLXXXIV. NO. 2005.

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the Civil Service. At Batticaloa, Government assistance was promised in settling the Veddahs upon cultivable land, and a free school was to be established for every thirty children willing to learn. According to present accounts the work so promisingly begun came to nothing. At this time, and for the past four years, there is a Wesleyan Mission to the Veddahs on the sea-coast, fifteen miles north of Batticaloa. The reserves allotted to the Veddahs in 1841 had been gradually sold up, and the poor people were said to have been "shoved out by the Sinhalese fishermen on the sea-side, and by Tamil and Moorish capitalists on the land-side," until they were worse than slaves. The Mission has twelve acres of land, which have been planted with cocoa-nuts, manioc, and Indian corn. Employment is thus found for a number of the Veddahs. A school containing forty children has been established, with a resident instructor. The writer, who recently visited this settlement, could not help being struck with the improved intelligence and the bright aspect of the children who had been collected for his inspection, as compared with the dull and unimpressionable condition of those met with in the inland forest tracts. There seems good prospect of effecting a similar improvement if efforts can be made to reach these latter, who at present are wholly without instruction. In addition to the Wesleyan Mission there is a Church of England school for Veddah children at Vendeloos Bay, north of Batticaloa.

E. O. WALKER.

NOTE.

The authorities from whose writings quotations have been taken are the Rev. J. Gillings, Professor R. Virchow, Sir Emerson Tennent, Messrs. Hartshorne and Bailey.

PROSPER MERIMÉE.

"Esprit à la fois exquis et dur."-Vinet.

N the year of grace 1827 I was a Romantic," so writes Prosper

of the mild irony he so

cultivated; but it may be doubted if he ever deserved the designation, since nothing could be less suited to the temper of his mind than the generous ardour of the enthusiasts who so victoriously opposed feeling to reason.

He was equally interested in every side of human nature, looking on with amused eyes at all its variations, but taking an individual part in none, and sedulously concealing any personal bias or any warmth of partisanship. A profound reasonableness was a part of his nature, and romance a mere adjunct to be used for literary purposes.

In his preface to the "Lettres à une Inconnue" Taine describes him as "tall, erect, pale, who, except for his smile, had the look of an Englishman, with a cold and distant manner, repelling in advance all familiarity;" and a later picture of him in his comparative old age is better still. "It was at Fontainebleau, in 1860, when I met the Empress coming from the Jardin Anglais : an old man was walking at her side, his eyes upon the ground; he was well, even coquettishly, dressed in the old Court style; his forehead was deeply wrinkledhis eyes, under bushy eyebrows, round, cold, a little hard; the whole attitude correct and very stiff. I thought him probably an English diplomat." As a child he was happy in a domestic life of peace and industry; his parents were both artistic, full of thought and intelligence. The love of home, so early fostered, always clung to Mérimée; and after all his travels he always returned to the same quarter in Paris-endeared to him by his early recollections.

As soon as his college days were over, he joined a small circle of celebrities who met together one day a week at the house of Etienne Délécluze, painter and art critic, where Ampère, Sainte-Beuve, Marc Girardin, and other less well-known writers held long literary discussions, and where Mlle. Louise Monod set herself the task of teaching her