ore paws and rubbing them over its face, till he was
forced to drive it, with stones, into the forest.

Leopards are strongly attracted by the peculiar odour which
accompanies small-pox. The reluctance of the natives to submit
themselves or their children to vaccination exposes the island to
frightful visitations of this disease; and in the villages in the
interior it is usual on such occasions to erect huts in the jungle to
serve as temporary hospitals. Towards these the leopards are certain
to be allured; and the medical officers are obliged to resort to
increased precautions in consequence. This fact is connected with a
curious native superstition. Amongst the avenging scourges sent direct
from the gods, the Singhalese regard both the ravages of the leopard,
and the visitation of the small-pox. The latter they call _par
excellence "maha ledda_," the great "sickness;" they look upon it
as a special manifestation of _devidosay_, "the displeasure of
the gods;" and the attraction of the cheetahs to the bed of the
sufferer they attribute to the same indignant agency. A few years ago,
the capua, or demon-priest of a "dewale," at Oggalbodda, a village
near Caltura, when suffering under small-pox, was devoured by a
cheetah, and his fate was regarded by those of an opposite faith as a
special judgment from heaven.

Such is the awe inspired by this belief in connection with the
small-pox, that a person afflicted with it is always approached as one
in immediate communication with the deity; his attendants, address him
as "my lord," and "your lordship," and exhaust on him the whole series
of honorific epithets in which their language abounds for approaching
personages of the most exalted rank. At evening and morning, a lamp is
lighted before him, and invoked with prayers to protect his family from
the dire calamity which has befallen himself. And after his recovery,
his former associates refrain from communication with him until a
ceremony shall have been performed by the capua, called
_awasara-pandema_, or "the offering of lights for permission," the
object of which is to entreat permission of the deity to regard him as
freed from the divine displeasure, with liberty to his friends to renew
their intercourse as before.

Major SKINNER, who for upwards of forty years has had occasionally to
live for long periods in the interior, occupied in the prosecution of
surveys and the construction of roads, is strongly of opinion that t