s, with a thatched roof of dried palm leaves so
braided together as to make a stout and secure protection from the
rain. The fronts of these simple houses are quite open, revealing all
sorts of domestic habits incident to native life, and very often
outraging one's sense of propriety. Men or women care nothing for
publicity, and do not hesitate in the conduct of affairs which are
strictly of a personal nature.

If one desires a remedy for over-fastidiousness, let him stroll for a
while about this native portion of Colombo. He will open his eyes in
surprise now and then, but it is astonishing how soon one becomes
indifferent to the most peculiar local customs, whether in Samoa,
Japan, or among the Alaska Indians. The lazy Singhalese or Tamil men
lying half asleep upon the ground, the women, semi-nude, cooking fish
over a brazier in the open air, and a group of naked children playing
in the roadway, form a common tableau in this quarter of the town.
Every necessity seems to be provided for by the salubrity of the
climate and the spontaneity of the soil. Enterprise, emulation,
ambition, are to these people unknown incentives to action. The height
of their desire is plenty of sleep and plenty to eat.

The scene is occasionally varied by a group of men sitting upon their
heels and absorbed in gambling for small sums of money. It should be
stated here that the natives, Singhalese, Tamils, Moormen, or of
whatever tribe, are all inveterate gamblers; only the Chinese can
equal them in this propensity to risk all they possess upon the cast
of the dice, or in betting upon some other trivial game. We were told
of instances where the gambler, having lost everything else, staked
the possession of his wife against his opponent's money, and, losing,
the woman quietly acquiesced in consummating the arrangement. Women of
the humbler castes are looked upon more as slaves than as filling any
other relation to those whom they call their husbands. As a rule, they
would not think of asserting any will of their own. As their husbands
are abject slaves to the idea of caste, so they are slaves to their
husbands, and however roughly they are treated by them, they take it
quite as a matter of course. In the southern part of the island
especially, each village has its cock-pit and its gambling-den; while
hard by is the drinking-cabin, where for a few pennies a native can
get very drunk on arrack.

At some of the low-thatched cabins in the Pettah