els by darkness they must find shelter in caves or abandoned
hovels. They recognize their degradation by falling on their knees when
addressing even toilers on the highway, and shout a warning on the
approach of a traveler, that he may halt long enough for them to get off
the road to secure his passing without possibility of defilement.

These groveling worms of the earth are nominally Buddhists, but are
forbidden to enter a temple. Hence they pray "standing afar off." Demon
worship is accredited to them. Their headman can officiate only when he
has obtained the sanction of the common jailor of the district. Even to
ask alms they must not enter a fenced property, and it is said at Kandy
that water over which their shadows have fallen is held to be so defiled
that other natives will not use it until purified by the sun's rays. And
thus it is; their race is penalized in every manner, and the ban goes
unchallenged by the miserable beings.

Their denial by mankind of ordinary fellowship has driven them to filthy
and beastly habits. They devour the flesh of monkeys and tortoises, even
carrion, it is claimed; and of late years they haunt feasts and
ceremonials hoping to obtain fragments of food thrown from the tables of
their betters. Now and then they are paid something for watching fields,
and for burying carcasses of dead cattle. It is not known that they are
thieves, but they are shunned as if they were. In emergencies, when
there is a scarcity of labor, they are induced to work on tea estates,
or at road mending; but the habits of vagabondage are too rooted to
allow their remaining long in useful employment.

[Illustration: CREMATION OF A BUDDHIST PRIEST]

Superior in every way to their men, the Rodiya women are the most
beautiful in all Ceylon. Their scantiness of raiment, it is pleaded
in their behalf, is due in no sense to immodesty. Rodiya girls wander
the country as dancers and jugglers, and their erect figures, elastic
step, and regalness of carriage, would be envied by the proudest woman
promenading Vanity Fair; some of them have faces so perfect in a classic
way that a sculptor or painter might make himself famous by reproducing
them.

Believe not that these miserable people represent the lowest grade of
degradation in Lanka's isle, for there are two outcast races so far
beneath them in the social scale as to be avoided by Rodiyas as if they
reeked with a pestilential disease. These castes are hopelessly beyo