understood sliding-scale. A witness in a
murder case, if he be a stout swearer, costs
five rix-dollars; in a land suit, witnesses may
be had for two or three dollars; burglary or
cattle-stealing witnesses are cheaper; they cost
about a dollar each; whilst a few copper coin
will obtain all the swearing you want and
something over, in an ordinary assault case.

I hastened on, past all these scenes, to the
Supreme Court, whose sitting was just
commencing for the day. The Court House,
wherein sat the Chief Justice and his brother
judges, was a long rambling shed of a place,
not unlike a paved barn with a tiled roof.
Making my slow way into the body of the
Court, I found it filled with the representatives
of almost every nation in the Eastern
hemisphere, blended with Dutch, Portuguese,
and English. I might have taken it for a
masquerade by day-light, were it not for the
Court on the little raised stage at one end,
with the dirty lion and unicorn, and the
figure of Justice looking quite knocked up
by the climate. The judges wore a very
comical appearance in spite of their gravity.
Seated upon an open platform on a level
with our faces, I could see plainly enough,
as one crossed his legs, that he wore high-lows
which required mending; another, wore
queer-looking worsted socks; while the third
appeared to have discarded hose altogether.
In a ricketty sort of sheep-pen on one side sat
the jury—a motley blending of white, black,
and whitey-brown. The foreman was studying
the coat of arms over the judges' heads,
wondering when the lion and unicorn would
finish fighting for the crown. The rest of
the jurors were either dozing or amusing
themselves in the best way they could. Opposite
the jury was a large parrot's cage without
any top; this was the witness-box.
Further away there was another parrot's
cage, in which the crier of the Court tried to
keep order by creating more noise than all
the other disturbers put together.

Grouped about a shabby-looking ale-house
table, covered with a rusty cloth of some
impossible colour, were the European auditory
and some three or four barristers and proctors,
the former of mixed races, the latter native.
An important case was on: a native was
being tried for an act of High Treason,
committed during the recent rebellion, and
the court was crowded to suffocation. The
prisoner, a poor, haggard, broken-spirited
man, was "docked" opposite the judges,
and glanced in a wild, frightened manner,
from his counsel to the Court, and then to
the jury, wondering what it all meant; he
had confessed his guilt, and why need they
take so much trouble with him? The counsel
for the prisoner was on his legs about to say
something; he was an European, a hale,
portly, bold man, with a twinkling cunning
eye and a shining face. I was rather at a loss
to know if he were going to make a speech,
or sing a comic song, but it ended in his
challenging the best part of the jurors—the
best part in every sense, for when he sat down,
the foreman, who had been studying the lion.
and unicorn so deeply, and all his fellow Europeans
had disappeared, replaced by others
of a kindred hue with the prisoner.

It was a long and tedious affair, that trial,
despite the man's confession, and as all the
intricate native evidence had to be translated
and re-translated, I soon grew tired of the
scene, and bent my steps towards the minor
courts close by. Between the two localities
were long dusty verandahs opening into little
dens of offices, where I saw through the dirty
barred windows, a strange collection of rotten,
wooden cupboards, ricketty desks and armless
old chairs: heaps of dusty papers were there
too, and with them smoke-dried old natives
that were fretting and fuming amongst the
heat and the dirt, as though they were
convicted criminals—Cingalese lawyers
condemned for their enormous crimes to toil for
the rest of their lives over perplexing suits
and ghostlike documents. These were
deputy-registrars, and translators, and
process clerks, and a host of other legal subordinates,
caged up like wild beasts at a fair.
How different from the vicinity of the law
courts at home. There everything is cool,
solemn, silent, orderly; here it is all glaring,
sunshine, dirt, noise, dust and effluvia. The
very Pariah dogs curl up their sickly noses
and scamper hastily past.

Forcing my way through a mob of rather
moist Malabars and steaming Cingalese, I
reached the District Court, where the
provincial judge sits all the year round in civil
jurisdiction. The court-yard in front, the
enclosed space in the rear, the filthy verandahs
at the two ends—all were densely studded
with anxious groups of natives, smoking,
talking, drinking, quarrelling, crying. Under
the gloomy shade of some bread-fruit trees,
were ranged the many members of some
Cingalese family who had evidently travelled
from some far-off village, to be present at the
hearing of their case. The grey old
grandfather, the sturdy parents, the two grown-up,
idle-looking sons, the pretty dark-browed
daughters, and the children scarce able to
walk, had all left their rice-field and their
tobacco-garden to try for the disputed
half-share of a Jack tree.

Out rushed a Peon from the crowded Court,
and bawling out some dreadfully singular
name, he rushed back again as suddenly as
though he just remembered having left all his
earthly treasures within reach of those
rascally lawyers, and there was no time to lose.
The family group watched the summoned
witness as he vanished amidst the army of
suitors at the doorway, envying him the brief
importance he was about to assume in open
court.

Around the entrances to this crowded seat
of justice, were wedged in compact masses
hundreds of curious and anxious listeners.