Professor Tiele, the learned Dutch author of “The History of Religion,” says: “The statement that there are nations or tribes which possess no religion, rests either on inaccurate observation, or on a confusion of ideas. No tribe or nation has yet been met with destitute of belief in any higher beings; and travellers who asserted their existence have been afterwards refuted by the facts.” Ceylon is easily accessible and it would be interesting if some scientific investigator would tell the truth of what has been said of the Veddahs. That they should believe in no spirit, worship no fetish, seems incredible. This was a delightful journey, with something of the charm of the olden time about it. We rode in our own carriage, such as it was; started at our own time, stopped where we pleased, and lingered by the way as our fancy might dictate. Nowadays—well, as Thackeray once put it, “We arrive at places, but we travel no more.”[47] I am loth to bid farewell even to the memory of the beautiful island. Eight years later, in 1906, I was there again, but only on a flying visit, when Prince Arthur’s mission was on its way to Japan to invest the Mikado with the Order of the Garter. We had to make the most of the few hours which were allotted to us, but we managed to run up through dreamland to Kandy, to stand in wonder by the side of the beautiful lake. Through a motley crowd, in which the picturesque old-world dresses of the chieftains, the bright yellow robes and brown shaven pates of the Buddhist monks were conspicuous, we were taken to see the Temple of the Tooth and its sacred relic, which was to be shown in honour of a Royal Prince, but which no man but the ordained priest must touch. When the King of Siam visited the Temple, he wished to be allowed to hold the Tooth in his hand. But the priests would not hear of it. In vain he pleaded that in his youth he, too, had been ordained. No! said the priests; he had forsaken the priesthood and abjured his vows and it must not be. He insisted, but they were obdurate, and so in his misery, like the Israelites by the waters of Babylon, the King of Siam sat down and wept.