The streets are full of natives, clothed or half-clothed in white or coloured cotton dress. The driver of your hired carriage who sits close in front of you is perhaps bare to the waist; but the dark-brown colour of his skin prevents you from being keenly alive to the fact, and you are not much impressed with any deficiency in his apparel. Men as well as women wear their black hair long and tied in a knot, or confined by tortoiseshell combs. Indeed the general appearance of men and women is so much alike that at first sight one is almost puzzled to distinguish them. A lady lately arrived at Galle, talking to a friend who had been much in her house and knew all about her establishment, happened to mention her ayah. The friend expressed surprise, as he did not know she had an ayah; and after explanation, and summoning the servant in question, she was made aware that her servant was a man, and had never pretended to be anything else, though he had been acting as nurse, and washing and dressing the baby for a week or two. Crowding round the verandah of the hotel is a host of importunate vendors of tortoiseshell, baskets, ivory boxes, and jewellery. As regards jewellery there is ample scope for their roguery, which is without limit. A fellow will ask you fourteen pounds for what he calls a real sapphire ring, and gladly let you have it, after a little bargaining, for two shillings. Europeans take unblushing rascality of this sort as a matter of course, and treat it, not with indignation, but with contempt. Even in a few hours one can understand a little why the natives are so often treated by Europeans much in the way that a good-natured man treats a useful dog. The hotel is a great building, with the bedrooms for greater coolness separated by partitions reaching only part of the way to the ceiling, so that a word or a snore is sometimes audible in every room from one end to the other of the long corridor; and many are the reproaches, expletives, bolsters, boots, and other missiles, which are flung over the partition at anyone who offends in this latter particular. In some of the private houses the doors are for the same reason made so as to come within a foot of the ground, and consequently when anyone is coming into the room there is ample time and opportunity for inspecting his or her feet, &c. before any other part of the person is visible.