By these circumstances alone, after having incurred considerable expense towards an expedition, the whole enterprise might be frustrated, and the lives of many valuable soldiers sacrificed. _Guides._ The necessity of experienced guides, so great in all military operations, is more particularly urgent in a country like the interior of Ceylon, intricate in its own nature, and to the knowledge of which we have no access by the usual means of maps. The difficulty of procuring good guides is very great. There are, it is true, always men ready to undertake for hire the task of conducting our troops through the Candian country; but these are either Candian emigrants, who have settled in our possessions, or Lubbies.[6] These persons are in general perfectly well acquainted with the common paths that lead from one village to another, and, in consequence, imagine themselves qualified to fulfil the office of guides. This might, no doubt, be the case, were our troops always to march in daylight, and by these paths only. But as circumstances often require that parties should be sent in various directions about the country, and particularly at night, the most favourable time for attacking the enemy, in such cases, the Lubbies, as they only know the high-roads, can give little or no assistance; and it is seldom that natives, even of the spot on which the operations are to be conducted, are sufficiently acquainted with all the paths and turnings in the forests, to enable them to conduct troops through them at night. In these thick forests it is so dark that, even in the brightest moonlight, it is extremely difficult, and often impossible, for one not perfectly acquainted with the track to discern the footpath. [6] A sect of Mohammedans, supposed to be the descendants of Arab traders, who, at a remote period, mixed with the natives of India, and settled chiefly on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel. They conduct the chief interior trade of Ceylon, and much of that with the neighbouring coasts. They are considered by the other Mohammedans as a degenerate race, and their character in India bears a near resemblance to that of the _Jews_ in Europe.