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Updated: June 20, 2025
We were to enter the Veddah country at the north and strike down to the south. I knew a bridle-path from Badulla to Batticaloa, which cut through the Veddah country from west to east; therefore we should meet it at right angles. From this point V. Baker was to bid adieu, and turn to the west and reach Badulla; from thence to Newera Ellia and to his regiment in Kandy.
The author just quoted says, "The tallest Veddah I ever saw, a man so towering above his fellows that, till I measured him, I believed him to be not merely comparatively a tall man, was only five feet three inches in height. The shortest man I have measured was four feet one inch.
By proper management, and some little presents of rice and tobacco, we got the animal into a good humour, and we gathered the following in formation. He knew nothing of any place except the northern portion of the Veddah country.
The latter is indigenous throughout the jungles in Ceylon, but it is neither cultivated, nor is the sago prepared from it. The height of this palm does not exceed fifteen or twenty feet, and even this is above the general average. It grows in the greatest profusion in the Veddah country. The stem is rough and a continuation of rings divides it into irregular sections.
Dango, who came up, inquired how the accident had occurred, when he was told that the young Veddah had just passed a wild buffalo in the cover, scarcely noticing it, when the animal rushed out at him from behind, knocked him down, and gored him from the groin upwards, as he fell. It was pitiable to see him when we felt how little aid we could afford him.
Some years ago I had entered the north of the Veddah country from this point, and I now proposed that we should start upon a trip of discovery, and endeavour to penetrate from the north to the south of the Veddah country into the 'Park. No person had ever shot over this route, and the wildness of the idea only increased the pleasure of the trip.
The dimensions of the Veddah country are about eighty miles from north to south, by forty in width. A fine mountain, known as the 'Gunner's Coin, is an unmistakable landmark upon the northern boundary.
The trackers that the headman had given us, now confessed that they did not know an inch of the Veddah country, into which we had arrived by crossing the river, and they refused to go a step farther. Here, was a 'regular fix! as the Americans would express it.
This was his world; but his knowledge of it was extremely limited, as he could not undertake to guide us farther than Oomanoo, a Veddah village, which he described as three days' journey from where we then stood. We made him point out the direction in which it lay.
An arrow is fixed upright in the ground, and the Veddah dances slowly round it, chanting this invocation, which is almost musical in its rhythm:" "Mâ miya, mâ miy, mâ deyâ, Topang koyihetti mittigan yandâh?" "My departed one, my departed one, my God! Where art thou wandering?"
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