Cruz, which was most to be
deplored, the presence of the uncleanly, disgusting vultures, or that
of Yellow Jack, as the prevailing epidemic is called in southern
Mexico.

"Why don't they kill these nuisances?" asked one of our fellow
travelers of another, while he impatiently drove away a crow from the
back of his chair in the hotel at Colombo.

"They have too much respect for their dead relatives," was the reply
of a companion.

"Dead relatives?" queried the first speaker. "What has that to do with
it?"

"Very much. These Singhalese are believers in the doctrine of
metempsychosis."

"Who?"

"Metempsychosis; that is, in the transmigration of the soul from human
bodies into animals."

"Don't see where that idea comes in," said the obtuse querist.

"Why, if a fellow killed one of these impertinent rooks, don't you
know, he might be murdering his dead grandmother!"

These Buddhists of Ceylon believe that departed spirits who have
behaved badly in human shape reappear in the form of domestic animals
or birds, and those who have done well are turned into wild animals.
The most dreadful fate is held to be the reappearance in life in the
body of a woman, a sad and significant reflection upon the treatment
to which they are universally subjected.

The Singhalese and Tamils are the most numerous among the population
of Colombo. Mohammedans, Malays, and Parsees, as intimated, are also
here in considerable numbers, mingled with representatives of other
nationalities. The Mohammedans are best known as Moormen. Though in
the far past of the island's history Ceylon was so long and so
intimately connected with the Celestial Empire, the author did not
even chance to see a Chinaman on the island, though at the north and
elsewhere in the several provinces these Mongolians are to be found.
In their migrating westward, the race cease to establish a foothold in
numbers beyond Penang. This latter island, as well as that of
Singapore, is dominated by them, the small trade of both places being
wholly in their hands. But beyond the Malacca Straits, they have not
made their way westward to any considerable extent.

The Singhalese language, which is soft and flowing, is founded on the
Sanskrit, an evidence in itself of the antiquity of the people. Tamil
is the language of southern India, and is used here by the Moormen as
well as by the Tamils proper. There is a Portuguese patois still
spoken by European descendants and half-breed