This work has been written as one continuous story depicting the lives of three generations of Veddas in their transition from the troglodyte, food-gathering stage to the crude beginnings of the hut-dweller and food-producer. It is the true story (allowing some-thing for the demands of the novel) of the last remnant of Ceylon's most primitive aborigines their swan-song. The author presents social anthropology in the form of a novel that stresses the human interest, rather than a severely detached manner of a purely scientific investigation.