ments, all their wants being supplied by prodigal Nature, without even the slightest exertion on their part, must be very happy; they ought apparently to have been Utopians; however, I was soon undeceived, for at dinner there came crowding round us a group of halt and sick, the most miserable, squalid, diseased objects, I have ever seen; one complaining of worms right up to his throat; others of hereditary sores, eating away their lives slowly, but surely, without any hope of remedy. I soon changed my belief, and satisfied myself that whatever diseases may be entailed by civilization, they are not greater than those which oppress man in his natural state, and that bad as civilized humanity may be, it yet affords a chance of relief, which wild nature does not.

Then again, the bestial degrading nature of the Hindoo and Buddhist faith, offering to its votaries no object of engrossing thought, either of duties for the present, or hopes or dread for the future, renders life to them a blank: they have not even the excitement of the chase, or of war, or the uncertainty of agriculture, to harden and string up their natures, and stimulate their energies. The worm that creeps slowly through life, its only object being to consume its food, and to escape being crushed, is almost as noble a creature as the emaciated, indolent, torpid Cingalese; his

companions, the elephant and the hog, are far beyond him. These wretches were the most degraded and most miserable of the human race I had yet seen; even offers of money, that omnipotent unanswerable argument, failed to induce them to exert their unstrung sinews, they would not be persuaded by any offer of reward to cut grass for our horses, or climb a tree to throw down cocoa-nuts. It is curious, that, fifteen miles from this indolent set, should be located the energetic, hard-working, healthy race of Moormen; the contrast between them is to be traced to the difference of breed, and to the degrading effect of Buddhism, the most contemptible form of worship the world has ever seen.

CHAPTER XXI.

PICTURESQUE CAMP-COOLIE-DEATH IN THE EAST-KILLING BOARSTENACITY OF LIFE-BEARS.

WE left our camp early in the morning, and pitched our tent in a very picturesque spot, on the edge of a kind of lagoon, full of alligators; but though we tried hard, we were equally unsuccessful as in our former attempts at catching any.

The coolies lighted fires for the joint purpose of driving away the ants and mosquitos, and of frightening the elephants. The effect of these numerous fires lighting up the old forest trees, and the gigantic bush-ropes, or rather, cables, that stretched from one to the other, was very striking. The jungle was so dense that we had been forced to hang our tent in an elephant path, and when. we turned in for the night, it was with the pleasant feeling, that we had every chance of being unceremoniously aroused, if any elephant, who had indulged too freely in the evening, should be seized with hot coppers during the night, and come down for a drink.

During our march the next morning, we passed what we thought was a dead coolie. The sight is so ordinary a one in Ceylon, especially on the roads which the coolies frequent in their migration to and from the mainland of India, that it scarcely attracts attention, unless one's horse shies at it, and then one follows the example of the Pharisee of old, of "passing by on the other side." We had all passed this body, when one of the party looking back at it, fancied he saw its white cloth move, and as there was no wind stirring, he immediately told us; so halting the coolies, we returned, and found on examining the object that it was a very old man, to all appearance perfectly dead; however, such was not the case, for on lifting him up we detected a slight quivering of the lips. We gave him some water, and in about ten minutes, his eyes opened, and he stared wildly about. We gave him a cocoa-nut, which he drank with starving eagerness, and then put him in charge of the horsekeepers, who, wrapping him in a horse-cloth, carried him to our campingground some mile and a half distant; here we fed him delicately on fruit, milk, and whatever we could to nourish him, and by degrees restored his strength so far as to enable him to tell his story. He had been returning with a party of friends

and relations from a pilgrimage to Kataragam, and falling sick, they kindly left him on the road, without anything to eat or drink, or any protection from the sun, till he should get stronger. We found him lying at the edge of a salt lagoon, and for three days and nights he had not tasted food or water; he had crawled to the lagoon, believing it to be fresh water, and one can imagine his agony and despair on finding it was salt, and that he had not strength to move away in search of more. When we discovered him, the pangs of death were over, and a very few minutes longer probably would have closed his existence. I doubt whether we conferred any benefit upon him by revivifying him, for supposing he ever recovered sufficiently to return to his friends, one cannot imagine that, having once deserted and left him for dead, his reappearance in the family circle would be a matter of much congratulation.

The more one sees of the world, the more one becomes convinced that one's existence and welfare is of far more importance to oneself than to any other person, and the feeling of selfishness thereby engendered does not improve our nature. We are often shocked to find how soon we are reconciled to the loss, or to the misfortunes, of our

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