THE PEARL OF INDIA

BY

MATURIN M. BALLOU

From India and the Golden Chersonese,
And utmost Indian Isle Taprobanes.

Milton

SECOND EDITION

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1895

Copyright, 1894,

By MATURIN M. BALLOU.

PREFACE.

That many readers evince a growing satisfaction in contemplating foreign lands through the eyes of experienced travelers, the favor shown to previous books by the author of these pages abundantly testifies. Mutual profit is therefore the outcome of such a work; both the author and reader are gratified.

It is a pleasure to depict scenes which have afforded so much gratification to the writer, for enjoyment is redoubled by being shared,—"joy was born a twin." The undersigned has often been asked both personally and by letter, "Of all the places you have seen and written about, which do you consider of the most interest, and which do you recommend me to visit?" This is a very difficult question to answer, because individual tastes differ so widely. It is safe to say no point presents more varied attractions to the observant traveler, more thoroughly and picturesquely exhibits equatorial life, or addresses itself more directly to the delicate appreciation of the artist, botanist, antiquarian, general scientist, and sportsman, than does Ceylon, gem of the Orient. There are few attractive places in the East which are so accessible, or which may be said to offer more reasonable assurance of safety and good health to the stranger, than this fabled isle of Arabian story. The climate is equable and most delightful; though the temperature is exceptionally high, it is, in fact, perpetual summer, varied only by the rains of the monsoon months of May and June, October and November. The tropical heat near the coast is trying to northern visitors, but one can always find a refuge, within a day's journey, up in the hills of the central province, where it is so cool at most seasons of the year as to render a fire necessary after sunset. In the matter of expense, this route is as economical as the average of land and sea travel in any direction. The cost of living in Ceylon is quite as moderate as in Southern Europe, and now that the island is so generally traversed by railways and excellent government roads, there is very little hardship to be encountered in visiting its remotest districts.

M. M. B.

CONTENTS.

THE PEARL OF INDIA.

CHAPTER I.

Introductory.—Coming from the Eastward.—Interesting Ocean Phenomena.—Denizens of the Sea.—Bird Travelers.—Delusive Mirage.—A Thrilling Adventure.—Prompt Seamanship.—A Struggle for Life.—Dust of the Sea.—A Dangerous Wreck.—Night Watches.—Sighting the Island of Ceylon.—Adam's Peak, among the Clouds.—A Beautiful Shore.—Steamers and Sailing Ships.—Curious Native Boats.—Singhalese Pedlers.—A Catamaran.—Tempting of Providence.—An Author's Position.

After a pleasant sojourn in China and Japan, with Ceylon as his objective point, the author came westward by way of the Malacca Straits, crossing the Indian Ocean on a line of about the eighth degree of north latitude. It is a lonely expanse of water, in traversing which plenty of time was found for meditation. The equatorial rains, though brief, were at times so profuse during the voyage as to suggest the possibility of a second universal flood, and also the advantage which might accrue from being web-footed; but the air was mostly soft and balmy, the nights were gloriously serene and bright. The transparency of the atmosphere magnified to dazzling proportions the constellations which looked down so serenely upon us, while the moon seemed to have taken a position vastly nearer to the earth than is its wont at the north. The phosphorescent waves tossed glowing gems, like fire-opals, about the ship's hull, while setting our long wake ablaze with flashing light, and producing a Milky Way as luminous as that above in the blue ether. All phosphorescent matter requires friction to infuse it with light, and so the thoroughly impregnated waters were churned into liquid fire by our vigorous and swift-revolving propeller. What millions upon millions of animalcules, and these again multiplied, must contribute to produce this aquatic illumination. During the day, large turtles, schools of dolphins, flying-fish, occasional water snakes, together with whole shoals of jelly-fish, were encountered on the widespread tropical sea. At times, myriads of the fairy-like nautilus floated past in gossamer frames, while in savage contrast, voracious man-eating sharks followed the ship close upon either quarter, in eager watchfulness for human prey. How terribly significant is the upright dorsal fin of this creature, seen just above the surface of the water, indicating the hideous, slate-colored body which glides swiftly and stealthily below!

Hovering over and about the tall masts upon untiring pinions, a score of white-winged, graceful marine birds persistently kept us company day after day. They joined the ship off the coast of Sumatra, as we left the entrance to the Malacca Straits, introducing themselves at first with noisy vehemence and piercing cries, as if to assert their presence and purpose, a proceeding which was not again repeated. What became of these handsome feathered creatures at night we never knew, and it was found that the oldest seaman was equally ignorant. If they slept upon the waves, they must have overtaken us with arrowy swiftness at the break of day. They were undoubtedly able to do this, as they outstripped us in speed at any moment when they chose to do so, sailing through the air far ahead and all around the rapid, steady-going ship. However early one came on deck, they were sure to be in sight, glancing hither and thither upon the invisible air currents without any apparent exertion. It was the very poetry of motion. We came finally to look upon these tireless fellow travelers with no small degree of interest, and should really have regretted their absence. It is always a pleasing diversion to watch them, to count and see that their full number is still present, and to delight in their free and graceful movements.

During the period of their presumed nightly rest upon the heaving bosom of the sea, our vessel must necessarily pass over a distance of many leagues, far, far beyond the power of human sight. How marvelous, therefore, must be the instinct which guides them unerringly to resume our company with the earliest rays of the morning light. When, in the arid desert, the exhausted camel sinks at last in its tracks to die, and is finally left by the rest of the caravan, no other object is visible in the widespread expanse, even down to the very verge of the horizon. Scarcely is the poor creature unloaded, however, and left to perish upon the sand, before there will appear in the far-away sky a cloud of vultures, at first mere specks in the blue atmosphere, swooping with lightning speed towards the dying animal, whose bones they immediately strip with terrific voraciousness. One who has witnessed this scene can never forget it. The vultures strain and tear at the carcass, swallowing great pieces of hide and flesh, until at last, when they are completely gorged, they can only rise a few feet from the earth, to sink again exhausted upon their feet. Hours must transpire before they can again soar any distance upon the wing, after their gluttonous repast.

The sea in this region of the Indian Ocean teems with animal life, the curiously shaped finny tribe often exhibiting colors as gay and vivid as those of the birds and flowers in the low latitudes.

Some strange and puzzling phenomena of nature were occasionally witnessed. Now and again the whole ship's company were deluded by a mirage; we seemed to be approaching land, though it was never reached, and at the moment when we should fairly make out its bearings, it faded slowly into thin air. So realistic were these appearances, often repeated, that some passengers were curious enough to consult the captain's sailing-charts to see if certain islands or shoals were not laid down in or near the course we were steering. The nights were the most enjoyable, so full of a delicious sense of repose, the stillness broken only by the great heart-beats of the huge engine which formed our motive power. The soft and refulgent atmosphere invited one to linger on deck rather than to seek the close confinement of a stateroom below, and thus many hours were passed in a half-dreaming, half-conscious condition, while reviewing the varied experiences of the past few months of travel. Tableaux of Japanese life and scenery, bewitchingly attractive and enjoyable adventures in tea-houses, gay excursions in jinrikishas, together with unique temples and huge statues of Shinto deities, passed in endless procession before the mind's eye. The oddities and the local color in Shanghai, Hongkong, and Canton; the soothing motion of palanquins; the sloping-eyed, yellow complexioned and pig-tailed people of China; a devastating cyclone encountered in the Yellow Sea, and the wondrous sunset which followed it; the gyrating waterspout which was seen off the Gulf of Siam, a not infrequent experience where so many active currents of wind and water meet; the many living pictures well-remembered of the islands of the Malay Archipelago engraven upon the brain at Singapore, Borneo, Sumatra, Penang, and Java, the latter containing more active and extinct volcanoes than any other known region,—all these seemed very real, though only silently rehearsed in dreamland.

Soon after leaving the straits and gaining the broad ocean, a brief but heavy gale of wind was encountered, which created for some hours a most boisterous sea. On the morning after the storm, a foremast hand was sent over the starboard bow to make fast some gearing which had become loosened by the gale. Almost immediately afterward, the cry of "Man overboard!" rang fore and aft the ship. A wide-awake passenger who happened to be standing near the taffrail instantly took a knife from his pocket, and cutting loose a life-buoy which was fastened to the starboard quarter ratline, promptly threw it towards the man in the water as he floated away from the ship. The sailor saw it, and being a good swimmer struck out for and reached it. A moment later, it was seen that he had succeeded in thrusting his head and arms through the opening of the sustaining buoy. In the mean time, the captain at the sound of the ominous cry sprang up the ladder leading to the bridge, and took personal charge of the ship, sending the first officer, whose watch it happened to be, to superintend the lowering of a quarter-boat to rescue the unfortunate seaman if possible. There was no flurry, no confusion among the crew. Not a word was spoken except by the officers. The silence of discipline was supreme. A sailor was promptly ordered into the shrouds to keep run of the man, who was soon out of sight from the deck, so rough was the intervening water. The quarter-boat was lowered from the davits, and was afloat in less than three minutes after the order was issued, with six stout seamen at the oars and the first officer in the stern. What a mere cockle-shell it appeared in that angry sea, one moment low down in the trough, and the next upon the summit of the waves towering above the deck of the ship. Nothing of less importance than the saving of a human life would have warranted the launching of a boat in such a wild condition of the waves. The sailor who had been sent into the shrouds was ordered to point constantly toward the man in the water, so that those in the boat might know in what direction to steer.

"Give way, men, give way with a will!" said the officer, and the oars bent to the muscular power of the crew.

The ship had been under a twelve-knot headway when the accident happened, and the man, supported by the buoy, was already a mile or more to leeward. Then occurred a singular and inopportune circumstance, which was for a moment the cause of dangerous delay. The sturdy seaman who pulled the stroke oar of the boat just launched was seen to falter, cease rowing, and suddenly to bend forward, as though he were paralyzed. The excitement of the moment completely unmanned him. His heart for an instant ceased to beat. The first officer comprehended the situation instantly. Seamen are trained to promptness; so off came his coat, the tiller was thrust into the half-fainting sailor's hand, accompanied by a brief command,—he could steer if he could not pull,—and the officer bent his own stout arms and body to the stroke oar. There was no time for words,—the stake was a human life. One or two of the anxious passengers whispered the word "Shark!" Where were those tiger-fish at this critical moment? The boat made slow but steady headway towards the distant seaman, while he at the tiller steered as was indicated by the man stationed high up in the ship's shrouds. Upon reaching the bridge and relieving the officer on duty, the captain, while issuing his other orders, had coolly rung down to the engine-room,—"Stand by! Slow down! Stop her! Back her!" with a brief interval between each signal. Then, stepping to the starboard end of the bridge, he waved his handkerchief to the fast disappearing seaman to let him know that his commander was at his post and would do his best to save him. The big hull, in response to her reversed propeller, after a few moments of tremulous indecision, began to move stern foremost. Several passengers ascended the rigging to keep the boat in view, for it too was lost to sight from the deck. It struggled stoutly with the angry sea, which seemed loath to give up its victim. Those in the shrouds gazed eagerly, and almost held their breath. The steamer drew very slowly nearer to the man in the water, as well as to the boat. By and by, after a period of terrible suspense, the man in the water was seen to be seized by his messmates and drawn into the boat, which was then turned toward the ship. It was a long and severe struggle still, to contend successfully with the high sea which was running, but the boat was finally brought on the lee side of the vessel, the stout ropes were made fast to the ring-bolts in its stem and stern, and with all on board it was quickly run up to the davits. The rescued man and his brave deliverers were received on board with three hearty cheers, and the big ship, once more under a full head of steam, took her course westward.

Prompt action, cool courage, and good seamanship saved the life of the imperiled sailor. There was more than one grateful heart on board which was relieved by a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

Some of our lady passengers complained of being seriously annoyed by sea-dust, which at first thought seems ridiculous. Dust at sea! But there is nevertheless an impalpable collection of salt matter or dry spray, so to speak, which rises at times from the ocean, especially in these latitudes, causing the eyes to smart, and giving a distinct saline flavor to the lips, while it is so penetrating as to thoroughly impregnate one's clothing. When the sun shines, this deposit seems to be less abundant, but like the dew, it affects those most who are exposed to the night air. The "dust" of the sea is very real, as any experienced sailor will testify.

Our voyage was not without several eventful occurrences. On the second day after the storm, the lookout reported some object ahead lying almost directly in our course. At first it looked like a huge whale, the dark body well out of water, or like the top of a sunken rock; but as we rapidly approached, it was made out to be the hull of a large ship, keel uppermost. It might have proved to be a fatal encounter, had we run upon it in the night. A sharp lookout, together with the sun shining upon the object, revealed it, but being so near the color of the sea and having no top-hamper in sight, it could not have been discovered at any considerable distance at night. Probably half-sunken vessels have been ere this the cause of other and equally fatal wrecks. The size and character of the one we had encountered could only be surmised. The name, even, could not be made out. It appeared to be a sailing craft of eighteen hundred or two thousand tons, which had "turned turtle," as sailors term it, perhaps in the storm which we had so lately encountered. The air retained in the hull when it capsized evidently served to keep it afloat. Our steamer was stopped within a safe distance, and a boat was lowered and sent in charge of an officer to examine the hull, with orders to cut a hole in the bottom. This would naturally cause the very dangerous obstruction to sink. It was slow work to cut an opening in the stout bottom with an axe, but when it was finally accomplished and an aperture two feet square was made, the downward pressure of the huge structure forced out the air and water with tremendous power, like a monster whale spouting. It was now plain enough what had kept the hull afloat, for as this confined air rushed out, producing a noise like escaping steam, the dark mass began slowly to settle, so that before our boat had returned and was fairly secured at the davits, it had sunk below the surface of the waves, which washed over it for a few moments, as though it were a coral reef. Then it suddenly disappeared altogether. These treacherous seas have been well named the graveyard of commerce. The mystery of the wreck, so far as we know, was never solved. Doubtless all hands perished together when the vessel capsized.

Of course, such an experience sets one to speculating upon the possibilities which it involves. Sometimes a terrible sense of loneliness comes over the voyager upon the ocean, notwithstanding the ship and its immediate surroundings, when he realizes the immense space covered by the wilderness of the sea. It is not so much fear as it is awe inspiring.

The passengers watched the captain with great interest daily, as he went through the formula of recording the ship's course. Any incident at sea is eagerly seized upon to vary the monotony. As is well known, the commander of a ship corrects his time by the observation of the sun at meridian, thus specifying his position upon the waste of waters, and enabling him to mark upon the chart his exact latitude and longitude. The process is a mystery to the average traveler, but its simplicity will delight him, if he once takes the trouble to understand it.

It was a bright December morning when we made the island of Ceylon. Not a cloud was seen breaking the intense atmospheric blue that overhung the vast expanse. Many of the passengers, on retiring the night previous, left word with the steward to be called at an early hour in anticipation of our sighting the land. The sea had been quite calm for the last two days, and the nights sublime. A few of us found it sufficiently restful to remain on deck amid such surroundings, gazing idly among the clustering stars, so far away, and watching for the first view of the shore. Thus the night passed, and the big red globe of the sun came up out of the sea to the eastward, as though it had been sleeping submerged there since it bade us good-night in the west at twilight. Adam's Peak, in the shape of a perfect cone, had been in view from the deck since the break of day, half lost in the far-away sky. In clear weather, this famous elevation can be seen sixty miles off the shore of the island. The height of the mountain, and its looming form, at first produces the effect of a mountain rising abruptly from out of the perfect level of the waves, but we were now rapidly approaching the land, and just as the steward's bell summoned us to breakfast, the lighthouse on the end of the breakwater of Colombo came dimly into view. The first meal of the day, usually partaken of at sea with such hearty zest, was neglected by most of the passengers that morning. A welcome and absorbing sight was before us. We had last been on land at Penang, which was now left thirteen hundred miles astern. All were weary of the sea, and in a favorable mood to fully enjoy the gentle land breeze which came to us laden with the fragrance of flowers distilled from a wilderness of bloom. Tropical luxuriance and languor reigned supreme. What a summer world it was, beautiful beyond expression! The sunshine had not yet asserted its oppressive power, and the island was seen at its best. An artistic eye could not but delight in the lavish display of well-defined color which was presented in the azure sky, the deep green of the vegetation, the pale blue of the shoal water, and the snow-white feathery spray combing over the stout granite coping of the breakwater. As we came nearer to the influence of the shore, the air was tinctured with rank odors, and the water was heavy with yellow seaweed, while the hoarse murmurs of the contentious waves sounded their mournful anthem. No matter how calm the outer sea may be, the large green rollers of the ocean break with great force when they meet with any abrupt impediment on the shore. One does not readily forget such an impressive moment. It remains a joy forever.

It is curious how sensitive the judgment is to external influences. Nothing is more likely to produce a fixed and unfavorable impression of a new place than to approach it beneath a cheerless, cloud-darkened sky, while bored by some personal annoyance. On the contrary, if one is introduced to a fresh locality under cheerful auspices, while Nature herself is in a happy mood, he unconsciously reflects a similar spirit, and is heartily prepossessed in its favor. It was only necessary to observe one's companions to see this fully illustrated. There were a few disaffected ones to whom the world seemed all awry, but the majority felt the inspiration and joyousness of the scene.

It was now clear enough that Adam's Peak ("Mount of the Holy Foot"), which had seemed a short time since to rise abruptly from the very bottom of the sea, was really situated far inland, dominating a whole family of lesser elevations, and having many miles of low, thick-wooded country lying between it and the ocean. As we rounded the lighthouse, half a dozen European steamships came into view, riding at their moorings, making a brief call here on their way east or west, together with a considerable fleet of small coasting crafts, and a long line of idle catamarans, drawn up upon the shelving beach. Besides these, there were a couple of full-rigged European sailing ships, presenting a strong contrast to the mammoth steamers with their invisible motive power. One of the ships was getting under weigh, bound for Australia. A number of her busy crew were aloft, engaged in setting sail after sail, and covering the ample yards with canvas wings, while the capstan bars were manned by others getting up the anchor, their hearty and melodious nautical refrain coming clearly to our ears across the intervening waters.

No sooner had our ship come to anchor than it was surrounded by a score and more of curious native boats, which are called on this coast catamarans (katter maran, "tied tree"). The true catamaran is to be seen all along the east coast of India, consisting of three or four trunks of trees bound together with thongs. These contrivances form the rude floats which are used by the Coromandel fishermen, and hence the name. A few of the boatmen who were permitted to come on board vociferously importuned the new-comers for a job, or pressed great bargains upon us in the shape of fresh fruit, Brummagem stones, curiously ornamented boxes of shells, and toy carvings in ivory and ebony, the latter mostly representing elephants and Chinese idols. Altogether there was a perfect babel of tongues adding to the confusion incident upon the landing of passengers and baggage. There was much handshaking, while many hasty but hearty farewells were spoken, for it must be remembered that the good ship, after leaving a few of the cabin passengers safely on shore and taking on board a supply of coals, would continue her voyage toward far-away England.

The queerly constructed boats to which we have referred consist of a rudely dug-out tree trunk, fifteen or twenty feet long, having planks of wood fastened to the sides lengthwise, to form gunwales and afford some protection from the water. No nails are used in their construction, the woodwork being securely lashed—we might say sewed—together with Ceylon cordage, made from the fibrous bark of the palm. An outrigger, consisting of a solid log of wood, is fastened alongside six or eight feet away, by means of two arched poles of stout, well-seasoned bamboo. The outrigger, which is about half the length of the boat, prevents the possibility of overturning it, but without this attachment so narrow a craft—less than twenty-four inches in width—would not remain in an upright position, if occupied, even in a perfectly calm sea. The outrigger is always kept to windward, and as these canoes have both ends constructed alike, they sail equally well either way. The mast and single sail, being portable, are easily shifted from one end to the other, or adjusted to suit. The similarity of these rude boats to those one sees throughout the Eastern Archipelago shows us whence the idea was probably borrowed. Some of the larger canoes are over forty feet in length, but none are wide enough for two persons to sit abreast in them.

In these apparently frail floats the natives go fearlessly twenty miles to sea in almost any weather short of a gale, to catch deep-water fish, and it is a very rare occurrence to hear of any serious mishap befalling a catamaran, or its hardy navigators. A European, upon finding himself in one of these "floating scarecrows," according to the remark of a fellow passenger after reaching the shore, "feels as if he were recklessly tempting Providence; and though he may not be drowned, still he deserves to be." They are wretchedly uncomfortable, these awkward boats, for one not accustomed to them, but experience demonstrates that they are quite safe. As to the natives, they tumble recklessly about in a catamaran, holding on like monkeys, both with hands and feet.

Some of the passengers were observant enough to watch the handsome birds which followed us a thousand miles and more across the sea, even into the harbor of Colombo. There were others of the same species flying about near the shore, but we fancied it possible to select our special fellow travelers, as they still kept near to the ship's masts, though she was now at anchor. Food was thrown to them from the cook's galley, and that important functionary declared that when the ship resumed her voyage, on the following day, the flock of gulls would follow it as closely as heretofore, even through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, until the far-away English coast was reached.

Thus much we have said by way of introduction, and having now landed on this "utmost Indian isle," let us endeavor to intelligently depict its unique characteristics, together with its past and present story, for the entertainment and information of the patient reader.

The author who sits down to write upon a given subject is generally so full of his theme that he must constantly put on the brakes, as it were, to curb his fancy. He is never thanked for what he omits from his pages, though there is so much which he might but does not express, lest his readers should feel bored by a detailed account of that which, with the added charm of time and place, may have had unwonted interest for himself. It is to be feared that words rarely convey the real spirit of what most fascinates the eye, and whatever they do not help the reader to see, like glass, they darken.

CHAPTER II.

A Classic Island.—Topographical Position.—Maldive Islands.—Lands rising out of the Sea.—Size of Ceylon.—Latitude and Longitude.—A Link of a Powerful Chain.—Important British Station.—"Mountain of the Holy Foot."—Remarkable Mountain View.—Queer Speculations.—Insect Life in the Island.—Acknowledged Gem of the Orient.—Wild Elephants.—In Olden Times.—Far-Reaching Historic Connections.—Arboreal and Floral Beauties.—Perennial Vegetation.—The Feathered Tribe.

Ceylon, the Lanka Dwipe, "resplendent island," of the Hindus, the fabled isle of the Arabian Nights, and appropriately called the "Pearl of India" by the English, who are its present masters, is separated from the southern extremity of the continent by the Gulf of Manaar. Were it not that a shallow watercourse of about fifty miles in width intervenes, the island would be a peninsula. As it is, a barrier to navigation known as Adam's Bridge, consisting of several ledges of parallel rocks, nearly forms a connection with the mainland. Aided by coral growth and the sand deposit of the ceaseless current setting into the Strait of Manaar from the long reach of the Coromandel coast, this may in the course of time be consummated. The tendency is certainly in that direction, notwithstanding a system of dredging which has been adopted by the English government, enabling vessels which do not draw over ten feet of water to pass through the strait, and thus avoid the necessity of doubling the island at its southern extremity. Ceylon,—the Serendib of the Arabs,—is the gem of the Indian Ocean, an intimate acquaintance with which fully sustains the delightful promise it suggests to the stranger who beholds it for the first time as he approaches the low-lying, palm-lined shore. Indeed, it might appropriately be called the Isle of Palms, so interminable is the array of cocoanut-trees which fringe the beach.

Judging solely from its present appearance and its geographical position, it would seem to have been a portion of the mainland at some former period, though there are many able writers who do not accept this idea, reminding us that animals, birds, insects, and reptiles which are quite unknown on the continent of India exist in this island. There are no hyenas, tigers, wolves, or foxes here, though there are plenty of these creatures just across the Strait of Manaar. As an argument this is not of so much importance, however, as might at first appear, since there are so many well-known instances of a like character. The dissimilitude of Sumatra and Java, separated by only a narrow channel, occurs to us, as well as that of Madagascar, but narrowly divided from the neighboring continent. So able a writer on physical geography as Sir J. E. Tennent believes that Ceylon is not a dismembered portion of India, but a distinct formation, perhaps part of a continent which has long since disappeared. In this suggestive opinion Professor Owen also agrees with him.

The Maldive Islands, situated five hundred miles west of Ceylon, are a group of seventeen coral islets containing a vast number of cocoanut palms, and are rich in varied tropical vegetation. They have a population of thirty thousand Mohammedans, ruled by an hereditary sultan, who pays yearly tribute to the present government of Ceylon in recognition of his dependency.

Legend informs us that two thousand years and more before Christ, multitudes of isles were attached to the kingdom of Lanka (Ceylon), which were suddenly overwhelmed by the sea. At the time of the great catastrophe, it is represented that the splendid capital city of Sri-Lanka-Pura, which stood to the westward of any part of the present island, was engulfed, and disappeared forever. The Portuguese, on their arrival in Ceylon in the sixteenth century, found the natives fully believing in the traditions of its former extent, and its partial submersion. This is duly recorded by the Portuguese writers of that period. The substance of this legend is also to be found in the Mahawanso, or native chronicles of the island.

So far as the flora and fauna of Ceylon are concerned, it resembles the islands of the Malay group lying far to the eastward, much more than it does the land which is situated so near to it at the north. Geologists tell us that the island has for ages past been slowly rising from the ocean level, and we know that well-preserved marine shells are found in masses at a considerable elevation, ten miles inland, both in the north and the south of Ceylon, and especially in the foot-hills of the central mountain, or Kandian range, as it is called, near Ratnapura. When we pause to consider for a moment the possible age of these marine deposits, preconceived and popular ideas of the time which has passed since the creation of the world are utterly nullified. That the process of rising above sea level has been progressing for ages is undoubtedly true, as in the instance of Norway and Sweden, where careful measurements have been recorded, from time to time, during a period of three hundred years, clearly demonstrating that the land of those countries is steadily rising, while the adjacent sea subsides. In some other instances the process is directly reversed, the land obviously, though slowly, sinking, and the ocean rising. This is a well-known operation, not confined to any one portion of the globe. At the ancient town of Pozzuoli, on the shore of the Bay of Naples, there is a solid marble pavement once belonging to a pagan temple, built between two and three thousand years ago. The temple was doubtless originally founded on the dry land, but this indestructible floor is between nine and ten feet below the level of the sea at this writing.

Ceylon is peculiar in its shape, resembling a cone, the smaller end nearest to the continent which lies so close to it. This northern portion of the island is a flat, narrow peninsula with a sandy soil, but which by proper management is made to yield certain crops fairly well. The western and southern coasts are low and densely wooded, having many small bays and picturesque indentations, while the eastern side is characterized by a bold and precipitous shore, quite inaccessible from the sea, yet affording one or two excellent harbors and several indifferent ones. The important and much-praised port of Trincomalee is on this side of the island, where several open roadsteads are commercially available for coasting vessels, so built, like most oriental water-craft, that they can be drawn up on the beach in rough weather. The coast is blockaded on the northwest by numberless rocks, shoals, and sandbanks, impeding navigation, though the island can be circumnavigated, as already indicated, by means of the Paumben Pass, between Ramisseram and the continent. The north and northwest coasts are especially low and flat, undoubtedly formed by ages of sand deposits brought down from the north by the ceaseless currents and lodged upon coral formations as a foundation. In area, Ceylon is more than three times the size of Massachusetts, containing twenty-five thousand square miles. The circuit of the island by water is calculated to be about seven hundred miles. In Pliny's time he made the circumference four times that distance. The latest statistics give it a population of three millions, which is a sparse occupancy for so extensive a territory, and one whose natural resources are sufficient for the support of that number of people many times multiplied. Taken as a whole, the island is perhaps the most thinly inhabited spot in the Orient, though it is the largest and most important of what are known as the crown colonies of the British Empire. Its number of people is annually on the increase, as shown by the English Colonial Blue Book,—an indisputable evidence of material prosperity. The extensive ruins of ancient cities existing in the interior show that there must have been in the past at least thrice the present number of people upon the island, while some authorities place the possible aggregate much higher than we have named, basing their calculation upon the extraordinary size and number of the "buried cities," one of which is reputed to have contained three million inhabitants, and over four hundred thousand organized fighting men, whose weapons were bows, arrows, and spears.

For the sake of completeness, it may be mentioned that the geographical situation of Ceylon is between the sixth and tenth degrees of north latitude, Point de Galle, in the extreme south, being six degrees from the equator, and Point Pedro, in the farthest north, a trifle less than ten. Dondra Head is a few miles farther southward, and actually forms the extreme point of the island in that direction, but Point de Galle, so much better known, is generally named to represent the position. In the olden time, the former was a more popular resort than the latter, a fact which some grand ruins clearly establish; indeed, Dondra was the site of the Singhalese capital during a part of the seventh century. A substantial and costly lighthouse has lately been erected here by the English government.

By turning for a moment to any good modern map, the reader will greatly facilitate the ready understanding of these pages.

Lying thus just off the southern point of India, at the entrance of the Bay of Bengal, Ceylon stands, as we have intimated, in the same relation to it that Madagascar does to Africa, forming a link of the powerful chain of fortified outposts which England has shrewdly established to maintain an open route to her Indian possessions. This cordon, beginning at Gibraltar, extends to Malta, Aden, Ceylon, Penang, Singapore, and Hongkong, thus dominating the southern coast of Asia, and insuring the maintenance of British power in the East. Of those named, Ceylon is the most central British military garrison. Colombo, the capital, is situated nine hundred miles from Bombay, six hundred from Madras, fourteen hundred from Calcutta, and sixteen hundred from Singapore. With all these places it has constant steam communication. Sir Henry Ward, then governor of Ceylon, sent an entire infantry regiment to Calcutta at one day's notice, when the outbreak known as the Indian mutiny occurred in 1857. These troops were the first reinforcement to arrive on the scene at that critical period. Touching the matter of home connection, Colombo is nearly seven thousand miles from England by way of the Suez Canal, which is the most direct route. As we proceed with our story of Ceylon, the relevance of these statistics will become more apparent.

The surface of the island is picturesquely diversified by hills, valleys, and plains. Its highest mountain, Pidarutalagalla, exceeds eight thousand feet, while its most famous one, Adam's Peak, rises a little over seven thousand feet above sea level. This is a lonely elevation, springing abruptly into a sharp cone from the bosom of the low hills which surround it, and from out of a wilderness of tropical jungle. Few mountains of its height require more persistent effort to reach the apex. Serious and even fatal accidents have many times occurred among the pilgrim hosts, who have been drawn hither from great distances for the purpose of prostrating themselves before the alleged footprint. The ascent from the Maskeliya side is much easier than that known as the "Pilgrim's Path" from Ratnapura, but the latter is considered to be the proper one by which the truly devout should seek the holy spot. Upon its summit ceaseless prayers and praises have ascended for thousands of years. Is it an instinct of man, one pauses to ask, which leads him to ascend such a height that he may seem to be a little nearer to the God he worships? Besides the daily visitors in the month of April, crowds of pilgrims from thousands of miles away in northern India, Persia, and Arabia come hither annually to bow down before a crude indentation of the rocky summit. The natives have a legend that Buddha ascended to Heaven from this mountain, but other religionists substitute the name of Adam; hence the designation which it bears. There is an irregular cavity in the rock supposed to have been made by Buddha's or Adam's foot, whichever may best accord with the pilgrim's faith. But surely the foot of nothing less than a human giant or an elephant would be nearly so large as this misshapen, so-called footprint. It is curious how far zealous fanatics will go in the line of self-deception, and out of what flimsy material fictitious legends can be constructed. Dreamy orientals ascend this mountain solely for devotional purposes, but the western traveler comes up hither with infinite labor to enjoy the grand view from such an elevation, and to see the sun rise in all its glory. He comes also to witness a remarkable natural phenomenon, which once seen is never forgotten. As the sun rises in the east, there suddenly appears upon the western sky the vast reflex of the peak, as clearly defined as though a second and precisely similar mountain were actually there. Through the shadow, which seems to have some peculiar telescopic effect upon the atmosphere, one sees Colombo distinctly, though it is nearly fifty miles away. As the sun rises higher, the great mysterious shadow fades slowly away like a ghostly phantom, growing less and less distinct, until presently the west is also suffused with the waking and regal glow of the morning.

Then is spread out before the view a scene of inspiration, rich in contrasting effects and remarkable for its variety of lovely tints. One may search half a lifetime without discovering anything to equal its combined charms. The mountain stretching east and west, the verdant plains, the picturesque tea and coffee plantations, the groves of oranges, palms, bananas, and other tropical fruits, are as distinct to the view as though within an arrow's shot. What a charming picture to frame and hang within one's memory.

According to the priests, four Buddhas have visited the peak. The first was there b. c. 3001, the second b. c. 2099, the third b. c. 1014, and the fourth, Gautama, b. c. 577.

Adam's Peak is by actual measurement the fifth elevation in point of altitude among a list of one hundred and fifty mountains varying from three thousand to seven thousand feet in height. It is doubtful if the existence of so well-defined and extensive a mountain range in this equatorial island is generally realized. One would like to know what could have been the primary and real inducement for selecting this spot as a sanctuary. The Buddhists think that the miraculous impression of Buddha's foot has made the place sacred; the Hindus revere it as being marked by the foot of Siva; the Mohammedan considers it holy as bearing the footprint of Adam; and so on. How came Hindus, Buddhists, and Mohammedans alike to attribute special sanctity to this particular mountain? Such unanimity of sentiment among widely differing sects must have had its rise, it would seem, in some legitimate cause, and not in the mere chance selection of a shrine.

A late writer upon the subject of Adam's Peak refers to the fact that in the Septuagint, the word "Serendib" is found in Genesis viii. 4, instead of Ararat, as being the place where Noah's ark rested after the deluge! Serendib, it should be remembered, is the Arabian name of Ceylon. One thing is quite certain, Asiatics of all creeds join each other in a profound veneration for this bold and striking mountain. Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveler who wrote seven centuries ago, spoke of the peak as containing the tomb, not the footmark, of Adam. The Mohammedans, ever ready with a poetical legend, still declare that when Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise, they were sent to Ceylon to console them for their banishment.

In order that a story or legend should touch the credulity of, and become current among, oriental people, there are two grand essentials: it must be sufficiently marvelous and ridiculously extravagant.

The author recommends the ascent of Adam's Peak to any member of the Alpine Club who is ambitious to achieve a laborious climb heavenward. There are few mountains only seven thousand four hundred feet in height which present such difficulties as this, when approached from Ratnapura.

The huge iron chains which aid the pilgrims to ascend the almost vertical path are relics of so great antiquity that in the legends of Mohammedans they are associated with the name of Alexander the Great. The marvel is, how even iron could so have withstood the wear of ages, thus exposed to atmospheric influences.

The mountains of Ceylon cover about one sixth of its area, rising in the centre of the middle province, and extending nearly across the island from coast to coast. The southern portion is in all respects the most attractive, though a thousand years ago the northern part of the island was the most populous and the most highly civilized. At the north, there are still to be seen the ruins of cities whose size and riches were once marvelous. Unknown agencies, together with civil wars and foreign invasions, have destroyed these ancient capitals and turned the neighboring highly cultivated lands into a wilderness. To-day it is the region south of the ancient Kingdom of Kandy—a kingdom no more—which most invites the stranger, rendered beautiful by an endless succession of musical streams, waterfalls, mirror-like lakes, palm groves, and flowery labyrinths,—the very realization of a tropical dream. This region, dense with forests of palms, rich in fruit trees, gorgeous in flowers, is the paradise of fireflies; phosphorescent clouds of these little fairy-like torch-bearers illumine the night at all seasons, reveling beneath the shadow of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved bread-fruit trees. Here they sport, contrasting their pyrotechnic display with the emerald lamps of the glow-worms. In the daytime, radiant, sun-loving butterflies on gossamer wings fill the atmosphere with flashing prismatic hues, the harlequin-like parrot and the royal-plumed peacock completing the outdoor carnival of colors.

The great green-winged ornithoptera, prince of the butterfly tribe, rivaling the humming-bird in size, is nearly as abundant as at Singapore, a living gem, measuring six niches across the extended wings,—the giant of its species. Enthusiastic naturalists give fabulous sums for specimens of this beautiful creature, much to the amazement of the simple natives, who have been familiar with it all their lives. The appearance of this lovely insect tribe in Ceylon is gorgeous, in their yellow satin, black velvet, and steel-blue costumes of gossamer texture, daintily spotted with white, green, crimson, and ruby red. These frail beauties are as various in form as in hues, still a perfect harmony of order is always observed. At certain seasons of the year and at uniform intervals, migration of myriads of butterflies takes place in Ceylon, but whence they come in such countless numbers, or whither they go, no one seems to know. When on the wing, these delicate creatures make marvelous progress against the northeast monsoon, though they are of such frail construction that one would think the slightest puff of wind must dismember their bodies. Where there are so many blossoms and odorous flowers, Nature did not forget also to supply myriads of the delightful little humming-birds, which are seen, with breasts and throats of gold and purple, stealing their sweets all day long, yet leaving enough for the innumerable wild honey bees, and to flavor the air with exquisite odors. Ceylon has been called the happy hunting-ground of naturalists, for collectors are overwhelmed by the number, beauty, and variety of specimens which present themselves, and which are easily secured.

A resident told the author of a lady friend who was an enthusiastic naturalist and skillful preserver of specimens, and who visited the island solely to gather examples of this fairy-like creature. She was absent from England five months, three of which were passed in the neighborhood of and at Colombo, Point de Galle, and Kandy. Our informant said that the lady not only added vastly to her own priceless collection, but she realized from those she sold to others a sufficient sum to pay the expense of her visit to Ceylon. Every one might not expect to do this, but the person referred to was a professional in her line of occupation, and produced finished, artistic results.

It has been the author's privilege to visit nearly all parts of the world, not omitting the principal islands in both hemispheres, north and south of the equator. With this experience, he does not hesitate to place Ceylon in the first rank for natural riches and attractiveness, and, next to Malta, in the same relative position as regards its far-reaching and interesting historical associations. In the exuberance of its vegetation, the productiveness of its glorious palms, the abundance of its luscious fruits,—including that seductive apple of the East, the mangosteen,—and the fascinating beauty of its variegated flora, it is not surpassed by any island or continent on the globe. A spirit of romance is engendered by the very name of Ceylon, the chosen field of oriental fable, recalling its mighty ruins, its unique native gems, its tribes of peculiar people, its mysterious jungles, its array of brilliantly colored birds, and its huge wild animals inviting the spirited hunter to deeds of daring and adventure. A simple statement of statistical facts will emphasize this last reference. The printed records show that, during the five years ending in 1862, sixteen hundred wild elephants were ensnared, and sufficiently tamed to be exported to India. In accomplishing the capture of these, about two hundred are believed to have been killed by the bullets of the hunters, besides others which escaped while so seriously wounded that they must have died in their nearly inaccessible haunts. Since the date named, such wholesale slaughter has been prohibited by government. Comparatively few are now exported yearly, and the only market for them is India, if we except a limited demand from European zoölogical gardens, and American circuses and traveling menageries.

At one time, not many years ago, the English authorities paid a reward for the killing of elephants. The fact is, they had become so numerous and destructive, especially in the rice-fields at harvest time, that it was absolutely necessary to reduce the number of the wild ones. A reward of ten shillings was therefore offered and paid for each tail brought to the official headquarters. These animals, at that time, had long been undisturbed, and were consequently less shy; while now, on the report of a gun, all the wild elephants within hearing, impelled by an intelligence bought by experience, rush for the depths of the jungle, which is quite inaccessible to human beings. They are mostly magnificent and wary creatures. No white ones are ever seen here, though they are so abundant in Siam. The elephants are measured, in Ceylon, at the shoulders, and a full-grown male stands usually about nine feet in height at this point, rather under than over. The largest elephants on the island are said to haunt the country about the ancient ruins of Pollanarua, where there are some almost impassable forests. The fever-haunted jungles have no terrors for these huge creatures, which seemingly enjoy entire immunity from all the ills attendant upon such surroundings. In its native wilds, no one ever saw an elephant ill from natural causes. When death threatens them from old age or the wounds of the huntsmen, they retire and hide themselves, to die.

The charms of this island were well known in past ages. It is no new discovery of our day, as the earliest writers celebrated the pearls and gems of "Taprobane," and ornaments composed of its precious stones decked Asiatic queens of beauty twice ten hundred years ago. Ancient thrones were beautified by its sparkling sapphires, and the products of its spice-fields rendered fragrant the fires which burned upon the altars of pagan gods. The Greeks called it the "land of the hyacinth and the ruby." Primitive nomenclature is not only poetically descriptive, but is nearly always appropriate.

The island is very ancient in its historical relations. Its most famous capital is supposed to have been in its prime five or six hundred years before the Christian era, while some of its crumbling monuments belong to a much earlier age. It is confidently believed by many students of history to be the Ophir of the Hebrews; and the fact that it still abounds in rubies, sapphires, amethysts, garnets, and other precious stones, seems, in a degree, to corroborate this supposition. An intelligent estimate as to the aggregate value of the gems exported from Ceylon during the long past places it at so enormous a figure that we decline to give it in this connection, though fully realizing that the yield has been going on uninterruptedly for a period of two or three thousand years. But aside from this very attractive feature, it is, as a whole, the most beautiful island of the East, producing many other gems besides those of a mineral nature. "It is truly impossible to exaggerate the natural beauty of Ceylon," says the author of "The Light of Asia," and adds: "The island is, in fact, one prodigious garden, where the forces of nature almost oppress and tyrannize the mind, so strong and lavish is the vegetation." Marco Polo, who visited it in the thirteenth century, said that it was the choicest island of its size on the earth; and though, in the dim light of such information as was obtainable in his day, he made some grotesquely incorrect statements relating to the country, he was most certainly right in this superlative praise. He adds that the territory of Ceylon was much larger in former times than in his day, a great part of it having crumbled away and sunk into the sea. This is an important conclusion, with which our modern geographers are very ready to agree, though conjecture only can say to what extent it may have occurred.

As already mentioned, the arboreal and floral display is glorious beyond expression, forming a very paradise for botanists. Nature seems in this latitude to revel in blossoms of novel and fascinating species. Moisture and heat seek here an outlet to expand their fructifying powers. Situated in the path of the two monsoons, the southwest from the Indian Ocean, and the northeast from the Bay of Bengal, there is hardly a month of the year without more or less rain in Ceylon; vegetation is therefore always green and leafage luxuriant. In the jungle, large and brilliant flowers are seen blooming upon tall trees, while the eye is attracted by others very sweet and tiny in the prolific undergrowth, nestling among creepers and climbing ferns. In fact, the flora is endless in variety and intoxicating in fragrance. Perfume and bloom run riot everywhere. It would be vain to attempt an enumeration of the myriad examples, but memory is quick to recall the charming pitcher plant, the lotus,—its flower eight inches in diameter,—the yellow jessamine, the gorgeous magnolia, with innumerable orchids in their perfection of form and color, not forgetting the orange-hued gloriosa, and the beautiful vine bearing the wild passion-flower. There is also the large pearl-hued convolvulus which blossoms only at night, known in Ceylon as "the moon flower," and conspicuous through the dimness by its radiant whiteness. Many of the orchids exhibit a most singular similitude to animals and beautiful birds in their unspeakable and sweet variety. At first sight, a collection of them strikes one like a bevy of gorgeous butterflies and humming-birds, flitting among the green leaves. It seems as if Nature had created them in one of her happiest and most frolicsome moods,—"so true it is," says Macaulay, "that Nature has caprices which Art cannot imitate." Occasionally the senses are charmed by the fragrant, yellow-flowered champac, held sacred by the Hindus, from the wood of which the small images of Buddha are carved for the temples. Here, too, we have the odorous frangipane, the flower which Columbus found in such abundance on first landing in Cuba. Was it indigenous, one would like to know, in both of these tropical islands so very far apart? It is a tall plant, with few branches except at the top, but having fleshy shoots with a broad-spread, single leaf. The sensitive plant, which is such a delicate house ornament with us, fairly enamels the earth in this island, growing wild from Adam's Peak to Point de Galle, multiplying its dainty, bell-like pink blossoms, mingled with the delicate feathery acacia. Growing so exposed, and in weed-like abundance, it is natural to suppose that it would become hardened, as it were, to rough usage; but it is not so, as it retains all its native properties, in exaggerated form, if possible. Our puny little hothouse specimens are not more delicate or sensitive to the human touch than is this Ceylon mimosa. It is the most impressible of all known plants, and is appropriately named. Curious experiments prove this. If a person will fix his eyes upon a special branch and slowly approach it, the plant is seen gradually to wilt and shrink within itself, as it were, before it is touched by the observer's hand. It is endowed with an inexplicable intelligence or instinct, and what appears to be a dread as regards rude contact with human beings. A few years since, the author was at Cereto, in the island of Cuba, where he was the guest of an English physician who was also a coffee planter. While sitting with the family on the broad piazza which formed the front of the bungalow, a thrifty sensitive plant was recognized and made the subject of remark. The doctor called his young daughter of eleven years from the house.

"Lena," said he, "go and kiss the mimosa."

The child did so, laughing gleefully, and came away. The plant gave no token of shrinking from contact with the pretty child!

"Now," said our host, "will you touch the plant?"

Rising to do so, we approached it with one hand extended, and before it had come fairly in contact, the nearest spray and leaves wilted visibly.

"The plant knows the child," said the doctor, "but you are a stranger."

It was a puzzling experience, which seemed to endow the mimosa with human intelligence.

One brings away especially a vivid memory of the brilliant scarlet and golden bloom which covers the flamboyer so densely as almost to hide from view its foliage of velvet green. Only in far-away, mid-ocean Hawaii does the traveler see this gorgeous tree so perfectly developed.

The former superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens near Kandy, whither we shall take the reader in due time, is a scientific botanist, and an enthusiast in his profession. He tells us that he classified nearly three thousand indigenous plants, which is double the flora of Great Britain, and about one tenth of all the species in the world yet described. Thirty of these are declared to be found only upon this island. If correct, this is certainly a very remarkable fact, and forms an additional incentive for exploration on the part of naturalists.

Any reader of these pages who can conveniently visit Cambridge, Mass., should not fail to enjoy the unique and comprehensive collection of specimens representing the flora of Ceylon, now in the Agassiz Museum. The material is glass, although it seems to be wax, but so perfectly has the work been done, under direction of Professor George L. Goodale, of Harvard College, as to be indeed realistic. We have called this collection unique, and it is absolutely so. Bostonians can find no more charming local attraction with which to entertain appreciative visitors from abroad than this in the department of botany at the institution named.

There is a constant unvarying aspect of green pervading the scenery of Ceylon, owing to the perennial nature of the vegetation. The trees do not shed their leaves at any fixed period of the year. The ripe and withered foliage drops off, but it is promptly replaced by new and delicate leaves, whose exquisite hues when first expanding rival the blossoms themselves in beauty of color. If fruit is plucked, a flower quickly follows and another cluster ripens,—Nature is inexhaustible. There is no winter interval or sleep for the vegetation, no period of the sere and yellow leaf, as with us in the colder north. The fruits and flowers are ever present, yet there is a certain resemblance to spring and autumn, as we are accustomed to see them. The shrubs and trees are decked more or less with young fresh leaves at all times, while the ground is strewn with those in a state of decay which have ripened and faded out of life. The latter with us are the harbingers of winter, the former coming only with the opening spring. Thus it is that we call it the reign of eternal summer, for all out-of-doors seems like a conservatory of choice flowers and birds of dazzling hues. Although these highly colored creatures of the feathered tribe, like the butterflies, are almost innumerable, one is forced to admit that there are few sweet songsters among them. Paroquets in mottled green, practicing their dainty ways, present themselves in flocks, lighting upon the nearest bushes and branches with a winning fearlessness and confidence. They will slip quietly away if one attempts to catch them, but when taken young they are easily domesticated, accommodating themselves to human associations with the utmost facility, and though they are left free to seek the woods and jungle when they choose, they are sure to return voluntarily to the cabins of the natives, to be fed and petted by human hands.

One variety of the green paroquet has a curious rose-colored ring about its neck, like the turtle-dove, so delicate and uniform as to seem almost artificial. The natives call it the love-bird. The youthful Singhalese women, like those of Japan, take great pains in the arrangement of their ebon-black hair. It was a unique and very pretty sight observed one day in the native district of Colombo, when a pair of live paroquets' heads, forming the apex to a native woman's abundant coil, were seen coquettishly twisting and turning hither and thither. The little beauties were quite content, perched up there amid their mistress' wealth of tresses. They were hardly confined, though their bodies were laid cosily beneath the braids as though resting in their native nest. What a field this tropical isle would have been for Audubon!

One often sees hovering about the gardens and bungalows a little bird as large as an English sparrow, called the Ceylon bird of paradise, but which does not deserve that name. It has a black head, a neutral-tinted body, and a long tail, five times the length of its body, consisting of pure white feathers. Its only marked peculiarity, so far as is apparent, consists in its singular and disproportionate tail. It has a little fretful, discordant twitter, but no connected notes. The Singhalese name for the bird escapes us at this writing.

Ornithologists make out a list of over three hundred distinct species of birds in Ceylon, among which the largest variety is found in the parrot family, very nearly equaled by the wading and aquatic tribes.

CHAPTER III.

The Wearisome Tropics.—Waterspouts.—Climatic Conditions.—Length of Days.—A Land Rich in Prehistoric Monuments.—History and Fable.—Last King of Ceylon.—Ancient Ruins.—Aged Cave Temples.—Gigantic Stone Statue of Buddha.—French Vandals.—A Native Chronicle.—Once the Seat of a Great Empire.—System of Irrigation.—Mysterious Disappearance of a Nation.—Ruins of a Vast City.—Departed Glory.—The Brazen Palace.—Asiatic Extravagance.—Ruined Monument.

The author had been expressing a sense of hearty appreciation, on a certain occasion, in a domestic circle at Colombo, as to the perennial character of the vegetation, together with the endless variety of fruits and flowers in this favored land, but it appeared that those who had adopted it as their home did not find it to be absolute perfection. There is no terrestrial paradise; there was never a golden age; both of these figures of speech are born of poetical license: but to the traveler who recalled for a moment the ice-bound aspect and chilling snow of his New England home which must have prevailed at that moment, the contrast which surrounded him here had a magic charm.

"It seems almost like heresy to say so," remarked the cultured and amiable wife of our host, an English official, "but one does sometimes weary of the sameness in the verdure of the tropics, lovely as it is, while remembering with a sigh the beautiful, varying autumn and the joyous springtime of more northern regions. Here we are always upon a dead level, so to speak; no contrasts present themselves. Eternal summer palls upon one. Perpetual youth in the vegetable kingdom," she added, "seems as unnatural and undesirable as it would be in human life. We have no winter, spring, or autumn in our Ceylon calendar."

The equable and fruitful climate of the island is not produced, as is the case upon the west coast of California, by the influence of the ocean. There the Kurosiwo or Japanese current, which closely follows the trend of the land like a mighty river, with a constant temperature resembling the Gulf Stream of the Atlantic, and a width of five hundred miles, makes a semi-tropical climate of a latitude which is often Arctic farther inland. Its equatorial situation alone endows Ceylon with endless summer.

It is curious to observe how the nature of some plants and trees is changed by transplanting them hither, and the same is also remarked of the average individual who has come from other less genial lands to settle in an equatorial climate. If it proves to be a healthy one, he takes very kindly to the delightful do-nothing of such a region, together with its lazy, sensuous enjoyments, losing in a large degree the energy and ambition naturally developed among the people of the north. The moral is obvious. He who runs may read. It requires a colder clime, with a soil not too willing, to awaken human energy, and to place man at his best. Luxury enervates; necessitous labor strengthens.

Fruit-bearing trees transplanted from the United States, such as peach, cherry, and pear trees, have in many instances ceased to produce fruit, and have become partial evergreens. Experiments with grapevines from northern climates have met with similar results. In nearly the same latitude, however, though in opposite hemispheres, the transplanting of some fruit trees, and especially of the vine, seems to impart fresh life and fruitfulness. Those brought from France and Italy put on new vigor when they are domesticated on the Pacific coast of this continent; while the mission grapevine and others native in California, exported thence to the countries named, flourish marvelously and produce abundantly. At this writing, news comes to us of the partial failure of the grape crop in some of the vineyards of southern France, and also that, following out the results of late experiences, the old vines are to be replaced by the introduction of California varieties. The grapevine does not seem adapted to tropical climes. It is not a perennial growth, but must enjoy its long winter rest in order to thrive. Even in mild, equable southern California, its fruit-bearing branches are cut back annually to the main stalk, where the principal life is stored. The new branches of the mission grape, as it is called in this region, produce bunches of the luscious fruit yearly, which often weigh four and five pounds each; but as we have said, the new growth is cut away every year after fruiting.

Checking the vagrant inclination of pen and brain to travel afield, let us turn to matters more relative to the expressed purpose of these pages.

The island of Ceylon is favorably situated outside the region of the cyclones which so frequently prevail in the Bay of Bengal and the neighboring ocean, while it is also free from the hurricanes of the Mauritius Sea and the volcanic outbursts of the Eastern Archipelago. There is no evidence of seismic disturbance in this region, either past or present. One does not leave waterspouts entirely behind in the Gulf of Siam, on reaching the shore of this island. Just before the season of the monsoons, they appear sometimes off this coast. They are never, however, of a fierce, whirlwind character, so as to cause any serious harm.

As regards climatic conditions, the coolest season of the year is during the prevalence of the southwest monsoons, or from the end of April to the end of October. The northeast monsoon is of shorter duration, prevailing during November, December, January, and February. Both these periods are ushered in by heavy thunder-storms and a liberal downpour of rain. The reader who has never experienced an equatorial land-storm has no conception of the fury of the elements under such circumstances. The continued blaze of the fiery lightning and the deafening crash which echoes through the skies are beyond description. Timid people try to hide themselves in the dark corners of the bungalows, while even the natives and animals often become tremulous with fear. It must be admitted that fatal accidents are frequent enough during these thunder-storms to keep an apprehension of danger constantly alive. In the mountain regions about Kandy and Ratnapura, where the echoes supplement the grand electric discharges, the deafening noise and reverberation can only be compared to the quick, sharp, detonating reports of heavy artillery. The monsoons occur with the utmost regularity, both here and over a large portion of the neighboring continent, and they are so regular that their arrival can be calculated upon nearly to a day. Electrical phenomena, thunder and lightning, are, as just intimated, often very grand. So, also, is the prevalence of optical displays, such as rainbows and mirage. As to moonlight nights and their dazzling exhibitions, like those of the tropical regions generally, words are inadequate to express their splendor, at once so brilliant and so calm.

The climate is very much like that of Java, humid and hot, especially in the southern portion nearest to the coast; it is, however, considerably more moderate than that of the mainland of India. Although so very warm, it is equable; one is aware of what to expect and can prepare for it. Occasional frosts occur in the highlands, but snow is unknown even on the mountain tops. The length of days, owing to the proximity to the equator, does not vary more than one hour, the sun setting at Colombo at about six o'clock all the year round. At Dondra Head, the extreme southern point of Ceylon, the difference between the longest and shortest day of the year is only forty minutes.

This interesting island is rich in prehistoric monuments, Buddhist temples, and lofty dagobas, some of which were originally over three hundred feet in height, exceeding that of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, in Paris, by sixty feet. This, be it remembered, was representative of a civilization which existed upon an island of the Indian Ocean between two and three thousand years ago. The lofty, gorgeous colored, and eccentric temples which the traveler regards with such curious interest in India belong to a much more modern period. They are structures which have been raised oftentimes upon the site of former heathen shrines. So in Rome, many of the churches which we visit to-day and accredit with great antiquity are rebuilt upon edifices formerly dedicated to strange gods. Some remain intact, like the Temple of Hercules and the Pantheon. These Ceylon dagobas are only one class of monuments, and are to be considered in connection with other vestiges of vast public structures, the origin and purpose of which have been lost sight of in the lapse of ages. Slabs of granite engraven with half-effaced inscriptions in Pali, and in unknown characters, are still found, mystifying the most learned antiquarians, while the significance of others has been made plain by means of commendable patience and scholarly acquirements. What an object lesson is here presented, attesting the evanescence of all mundane power and glory. Here are evidences of vast and costly enterprises, such as the rearing of grand monuments whose legitimate object can only be conjectured, and the names of whose builders are forgotten. The annals of the Singhalese, to whom we are not accustomed to give much credit as a literary people, yet afford consecutive historical data for twenty-four centuries back, though, as in most oriental countries, the records of their past combine truth and fable almost indiscriminately, so that it is often difficult to distinguish one from the other. These Eastern writers had a royal mode of assertion, much more impressive than convincing; as regards the general fidelity of these annals, however, there is no reasonable doubt, after allowing for what may be termed poetical license of expression. We may well ask ourselves how many lands can, like Ceylon, tell so much of their past history in authentic records verified by enduring monuments. As is well known, we in America go back only about four centuries before the trail of history is lost. To be sure, conjecture is abundant enough, but conjecture is not history.

Compared with the probable age of the globe, how quickly history fades into fable! Agassiz thought this to be the oldest country of which we have any reliable knowledge. The Western mound builders were undoubtedly a distinctive race, yet who can tell their story? The mysteries of Yucatan are unsolved. There was a civilization once existing in Peru whose history is to us a blank. Of the origin of the Sphinx, older than the Pyramids, what do we really know? On Easter Island, in the South Pacific, are indestructible evidences of an ancient people, who possessed a written language so old that no one can decipher its admirably graven characters. Where did that island come from, and what became of its people? Were they and their country submerged, like another Atlantis, and is this island the apex of a mountain range left above the devouring ocean to tell the tale? This is not a wild supposition. It has been suggested and declared possible by more than one astute and scholarly writer upon physical geography. As to antiquity, the monuments of Egypt enable us to trace back the history of civilized man only six thousand years, though all intelligent archæologists know that the earth must have been inhabited by human beings an infinite number of years prior to that period. Philology and geology are sufficient to prove this.

Singhalese annals record in detail the reign of one hundred and sixty sovereigns during a period extending from the conquest of the island, b. c. 543, by Wijaya, a prince from northern India, to the deposition of Wikram Raja Sinka by the English in 1815. This was the last king of Kandy, the then native capital of Ceylon. Sufficient is recorded of the personal character of Wijaya, the early conqueror of the island, to prove his utter barbarity, so that we are naturally led still more to wonder whence came the artists—for artists they were—who designed and built such cities as Anuradhapura and Pollonarua, the first of which was probably founded during his reign. Either the Singhalese as a race must have retrograded in a most marvelous manner, while other nationalities were in the line of progress, or foreign artists and builders must have been imported to rear such grand and beautiful capitals in this Indian isle. Does the reader realize that our best architects to-day go back for suggestions to the elaborate and elegant ornamentations which prevailed at this period in stone columns and lofty façades? Though scarred by warfare with the ages, these still form rare and choice object lessons to the appreciative artist.

Among the remarkable evidences of great antiquity in Ceylon, we recall the elaborate cave-temples of Dambula, hewn out of the primitive rock, and which have existed at least two thousand years, representing an infinite amount of patient labor, which must have been executed with tools admirably adapted to the purpose assigned. The principal temple—there are four of them—was dedicated to Buddha, whose creed is still the prevailing faith of Asia,—a doctrine ages older than our so-called Christian religion. The entrance to the principal cave-temple is elaborately carved in the solid stone, and is wonderfully well-preserved. The design is harmonious with the purpose, presenting a score or more of figures in bas-relief, with embellishments appropriate to the Buddhist faith. Two mammoth figures, one on either side, represent, probably, guardian spirits or gods. Just within, there is an altar with a sitting figure of Buddha, opposite the entrance. It is interesting to note the ornamental entrance to the temple, as exhibiting the degree of artistic appreciation which existed here in Ceylon between two and three thousand years ago. This largest temple is one hundred and eighty feet long, eighty wide, and twenty-five high, a gloomy vault at best, containing a gigantic recumbent stone statue of Buddha, forty-seven feet in length, the head resting on the right hand, indicating repose, one of the favorite positions in which the prophet is usually represented in the temples of Ceylon. The chambers or halls, which are hollowed out of the rock, are reached by long flights of stone steps. Each temple is most grotesquely painted with scenes supposed to represent the past history of the island. In the first of the caves is the immense statue already spoken of. In the others are those of ancient kings in heroic size, but not nearly so large as that of Buddha. On the several walls are rudely-painted tournament scenes, elephant hunts, and half-effaced battle pictures. Some of the apartments have iron-grated windows, and were evidently places of confinement for political prisoners, some time in the far past. An old Buddhist priest is in charge, grumpy, reticent, and apparently dissatisfied with himself and the world generally. In the first and largest of the stone chambers of this huge rock at Dambula, besides the large recumbent figure of Buddha, there is a statue of Vishnu, held especially sacred, and before which solemn oaths in litigated cases were administered, without any other recourse for settlement. This was when one of the parties agreed to abide by the solemn oath of the other, to be given in specified form before this statue of Vishnu. It is a rudely executed figure in granite, as indeed are all the statues of the period. In the second chamber or temple there are half a hundred statues of Buddha, besides representatives in stone of various heathen gods, painted in yellow, blue, and white robes, but why the multiplicity of Buddhas it would be difficult to divine. In front of the cave-temples is a flourishing boo-tree, and a small grove of cocoanut palms which have grown to a great size. As usual, centuries of age are claimed for the first-named tree. Round about the plain, among the rude, wild vegetable growth, a peculiar cactus is seen, a familiar acquaintance, first met with on the plains of Mexico. Its thick leaves form also its branches, each leaf being attached to its neighbor endwise, like links of a chain, and being bordered by a bright yellow ruffle of profuse blossoms. These cave-temples of Dambula are cut in a solitary mass of rock, rising from the otherwise level plain to about five hundred feet in height and four times that in length. This is undoubtedly the most remarkable group of cave-temples upon the island.

One is vividly reminded by these peculiar and enduring structures of a similar famous place of Hindu worship cut out of the solid rock on the island of Elephanta in the outer harbor of Bombay, and also of those found at Ellora and Carlee, in India proper. These three Buddhist temples are known to have been in existence for about twenty centuries, and are very similar in design. The elaborate sculptures in bas-relief which decorate them are almost identical in character, but they have little or no artistic merit, being in fact as crude as Chinese or Japanese idols, mere caricatures as seen from a modern point of view, and yet they are clearly the result of a distinctive purpose. As to depicting the human figure with any regard to its anatomy, that was not understood by these artists, any more than are the laws of perspective by the Chinese or Japanese of to-day. So in ancient Egyptian sculpture, an approximation to the true outline of the human figure is all that is attempted. The stone pillars and figures at Elephanta, so venerable from age and association, were nearly destroyed by French cannon-balls, the guns being brought on shore at considerable trouble, and maliciously directed, for this purpose. It seemed to be a fixed principle with the soldiers of the first Napoleon to purloin everything of value which was portable in the countries they invaded, and what they could not steal and carry away, with true barbaric instinct they destroyed. Churches, charitable institutions, hospitals, were all alike looted by these French vandals. Even tombs were invaded by them in their rapacity, as at Granada, where the leaden coffins in the royal vaults were pried open with bayonets in search of treasures supposed to have been buried with the bodies. At Seville, they broke open the coffin of Murillo, wherein finding nothing of commercial value, they scattered the ashes of the great master in art to the wind. It will also be remembered that Marshal Soult—to his lasting disgrace be it recorded—treated the ashes of Cervantes in a similar manner; a most petty and disgraceful meanness for a marshal of France to be guilty of.

The Mahawanso, "Genealogy of the Great," a native chronicle, contains a history of the several dynasties which have controlled the island from B. C. 543 down to a. d. 1758. This unique and remarkable Singhalese book is a metrical chronicle written in Pali verse, and forms what is universally received as an authentic and most invaluable record of the national history of Ceylon. A scholarly translation of the same is now extant in English. Pali, as the reader doubtless knows, is a dead language founded upon the Sanscrit, though Buddhists claim that it is the original of all tongues. This is an assumption easily disproved by Egyptian inscriptions dating back over six thousand years. The island, under its Sanskrit name of Lanka, is also the subject of a mythical poem of the Hindus, and its conquest by Rama is the theme of the Ramayana, doubtless one of the most ancient epics in existence. The Mahawanso, though the oldest, is by no means the only Singhalese chronicle of a historic character. It was designed by a priest named Mahanamo, who compiled the early portion, commencing five centuries and more before Christ, and bringing it down to the year 301 of our era. After this it was continued by able successors, who carried on the original plan of the beginner to the period when the English took forcible possession of Ceylon. There are several comprehensive manuscripts devoted to native history, written upon talipot palm-leaf, carefully preserved in the museum at Colombo.

Besides these important records there is abundant evidence of a tangible character to show that there once existed upon this island a great and powerful empire in a condition of advanced civilization. The gigantic remains of palaces and temples tell us this. There are also evidences of a system of irrigation which was remarkably perfect in conception and consummation, though it must have been achieved by the simplest means, that is, by the aid of no mechanical facilities such as we possess. This system covered the face of the country, north and south, like a network. Immense lakes were formed by damming the natural outlets of the mountain streams at the mouth of extensive valleys, and that was all that was artificial about them. Nature had prepared the way; still, the amount of labor involved in the practical application of the principle was enormous. The remains of these great reservoirs thus created are objects of admiration to our modern engineers, not only for the boldness and magnificence of their construction, but also for the beneficence of their purpose. The marvelous ruins of these reservoirs are the proudest and most significant monuments which remain of the former greatness of this country. No constructions for a similar purpose found in any part of the world have ever surpassed them. So long as they were in repair and fully operative, the people of Ceylon had no occasion to go abroad for rice upon which to subsist. The grand supply of water for the distributing tanks was conducted from the distant mountains, through dense forests, across broad ravines, and around the sides of intervening hills, by stout channel-ways miles and miles in length. No considerable population could have been supported in a country subject to prolonged droughts without the aid of some such fertilizing agency, and no other system would have been so well adapted to the raising of the staple grain of the island. Most of these artificial lakes are now in ruins, overgrown with jungle grass, and in some instances by heavy forests.

No one can truly say what caused the decadence of the several ancient capitals now lying in the dust, leaving only a blank memorial of their former existence. It is a puzzling question as to what could have swept a population of millions from the face of the globe and left no clearer record of their occupancy and departure. When there is pointed out to the traveler in Japan a location where a big and populous city once stood, but which is now only a series of thrifty grain-fields, no great surprise is felt. Japanese houses are only constructed, as a rule, of bamboo frames with tissue coverings, but the ruined cities of Ceylon were built of stone and brick, presumedly indestructible except by some great and general catastrophe. The ruins of Anuradhapura show that in mediæval times it must have been a city containing a vast concourse of people. We know that it was recognized as the capital of Ceylon from three to four hundred years prior to the birth of Christ down to the year 770 of the present era. It has been justly called the Palmyra of Ceylon, and was contemporary with Babylon and Nineveh. It was a royal city, wherein ninety kings reigned in succession, and its dimensions exceeded the present area of London. What a grand and imperial metropolis it must have been in its pristine glory! At a time when England was still in a condition of barbarism, this capital of an island in the Indian Ocean was at the zenith of its prosperity, enjoying luxuries which argued a high condition of civilization. The reason for selecting this plain in the heart of the country as a suitable location for its capital is not obvious, except that from the earliest ages the spot has been sacred to the votaries of Buddha. Its site is near the centre of the great plain which occupies the northern portion of the island, about one hundred miles from Kandy, and three hundred feet above the level of the sea.

Here, amid tall trees and thick undergrowth, are scattered hundreds, nay, thousands of stone columns, huge monoliths, granite statues, fragments of grand palaces, and elaborate public buildings, which once adorned broad and level thoroughfares, while the surrounding country exhibited a wide expanse of rice-fields irrigated by numberless canals, together with all the beauty of cultivated tropical vegetation. The early chronicles tell us of the surprising loveliness of this region round about the ancient metropolis, the brilliancy of its native jewels, the fertility of its carefully nurtured soil, its magnificent palms, the abundance of its fruits, the sagacity of its elephants, and the constant fragrance of its spice-laden atmosphere.

Anuradhapura! how little we of the nineteenth century have even heard of its people, who built temples of stone and palaces of marble,—a nation which lived for twenty centuries in oriental splendor; a city which was rich, populous, and famous, long before Rome had risen to power; a capital which achieved such ambitious architectural results only to sink at last suddenly and mysteriously into oblivion. What the possible purpose could have been in creating such a singular page in the annals of history as the building and peopling of a giant metropolis on this Indian island, whose accomplished mission illustrates only the mutability of all terrestrial things, only that inscrutable Wisdom which rules the universe can answer.

Except the mountain range which so nearly divides the island at its centre, and the spurs which it throws out at intervals, there are few elevations worthy of notice in Ceylon. One, known as Mihintale, about a thousand feet in height, dominates the ruins of the ancient city just described, and is so perpendicular that to reach its summit one must avail himself of the artificial steps cut in the solid rock. These stones, smoothed and indented by centuries of use, are said to have been thus worn by thousands and thousands of pilgrims, who ascended to the shrine above upon their knees. This notable hill, which almost deserves the name of mountain, was fortified by the aborigines in the olden time, as shown by irregular lines of defensive works in stone, whose dismantled and disintegrated condition testifies to their antiquity. On the summit stands a shrine, showing that it was held to be a sacred spot from the earliest ages, probably long before the date when the now mouldering capital was founded. The view afforded on either hand from the apex of the mount embraces the far-away ocean, and the nearer sea of undulating forests and groves of palms, clad in the exquisite verdure of the tropics.

Anuradhapura was the largest city in the island, and is confidently asserted to have contained, in its prime, three million people, over four hundred thousand of whom were fighting-men. But there were others, considerable in size and importance, which existed during the period of its prosperity. The records show that this ancient metropolis was fifty-two miles in circumference, or sixteen miles across in a straight line from the north to the south gate, covering two hundred and fifty-six square miles! What have we in modern times to equal these ruins in spaciousness? Perhaps some deduction should be made from such remarkable figures. Of course, the reader will understand that the area here given was not actually covered by solid blocks of dwellings. Private residences were generally surrounded by small but elaborate gardens. There was ample air space about the temples, palaces, and public buildings, together with large open commons for military parades, for public baths, for elephant fights, for political forums, and market-places. Spaciousness and elegance were the characteristics of this ancient Singhalese metropolis, this grand city of the plains, where one stands to-day surrounded by centuries of tangible history. The eye rests upon miles and miles of broken stone statues of bulls, elephants, sarcophagi, and heavy capitals of granite columns, many of whose delicate, artistic capitals and designs are still intact.

All oriental narrative is tinctured with exaggeration, but Sir James Emerson Tennent, so long officially connected with the island, and personally familiar with the ruins of Anuradhapura, says no one who visits the place to-day can doubt that Ceylon, in the zenith of its prosperity, contained ten times its present population; and as he wrote this in 1859, when the aggregate was about one million, he wished to signify that the number of inhabitants, at the period to which he referred, was probably ten millions. The same writer tells us that this density of population must have been preserved through many centuries, in spite of revolutions and invasions, in order to produce the results, the ruins of which are still visible to all observers.

That the people of Anuradhapura were early and skillful workers in brass, iron, and glass, articles unearthed among these ruins abundantly testify. Further explorations and excavations will doubtless result in valuable information. Five or six feet of earth, upon an average, must be removed before the process of uncovering can be said to have fairly commenced, so that the prospective labor of exhumation is simply immense. Still, almost every year brings some new enthusiast to the front, whose time and money are freely devoted to this object until his ardor is appeased, and he leaves the field to some one else. A steadily sustained effort, aided and directed by the government, might accomplish something worth recording, but such desultory and spasmodic attempts are of very little account. At Pompeii, where, by persistent effort, a whole city has been unearthed, we see what such exhumation signifies, though the circumstances are not precisely similar, the one having been suddenly covered by an eruption of the neighboring volcano, while the other yielded to the wear of time and the effect of foreign invasions. A score of cities, however, like Pompeii would not cover the area once occupied by this vanished metropolis.

The ancient capital was named in honor of a certain prince, Anuradha, by whom it was founded twenty-five centuries ago. A thousand years since, this city was still populous, gay, and beautiful, with fragrant gardens, thriving shops, proud dwellings, gilded palaces, lofty temples, religious processions, and frequent displays of royal pageants. The Singhalese chronicles are full of references to agricultural prosperity, to ample herds, the breeding of cattle, and the extensive culture of grain. They speak of women who were treated with great deference, and of priestesses and queens who held high places with honor. Rich furniture was used in the dwellings, and costly textures for dress, these of course imported from other countries. Though the inhabitants of Anuradhapura were not themselves a maritime people, they were constantly visited by others from afar, who brought with them rich goods to exchange for pearls and precious stones. We know that Ceylon was rich in these at that period, even as she is at the present time, and exported peacocks, apes, and ivory. In the ancient Hebrew records, the names of these were the same as those known at present to the natives in this island. To-day, mutability is written upon its scattered and neglected ruins in a language all can understand. Who can wonder that individuals perish and are forgotten, when the entire population of a great, imperial metropolis thus vanish, while their noblest and most enduring works crumble into dust? The significance of such instances should humble the proudest mortal who walks the earth. The spot where the Brazen Palace, so-called, once stood in the ancient capital still shows scores of granite columns in the shape of undressed monoliths, projecting about twelve feet above the level of the ground, upon some of which there exist the remains of elaborate capitals, closely resembling the Grecian Corinthian order. This edifice, dating about two hundred years before Christ, was not the royal residence, but a palace devoted to accommodation of the priesthood, and was originally nine stories in height, covering a square of ground measuring two hundred and thirty feet each way. "The roof," according to native chronicles, "was of brass, and its great hall, which was supported by golden pillars, also contained a throne of solid ivory," though what the Buddhist priesthood required of a "throne" we are not informed.

This description of the great hall with its golden pillars sounds perhaps like an oriental exaggeration, but the people of those days came originally from India, where such examples of extravagance were by no means unknown during the Mogul dynasty. The probability is that the Brazen Palace was in reality the royal residence. Speaking of Indian extravagance, we all remember the peacock throne of the king of Delhi,—a throne of solid gold, six feet long and four feet broad, surmounted by a canopy of gold, and supported by twelve pillars composed of the same precious material. The back of this costly structure was made to represent a peacock with its tail-feathers expanded, hence the name. The natural colors of the feathers were closely imitated with rubies, sapphires, diamonds, and other precious stones. The total value of the whole exceeded thirty million dollars. The author has stood within this royal chamber at Delhi, but the gorgeous throne has long since disappeared. Enough, however, still remains to show what regal splendor must have existed in this marvelous palace. These Mogul rulers used costly gems, gold and silver, together with precious marbles and rarest stones, as freely as modern potentates employ granite, combined with bricks and mortar. The wealth of the then known world was in the possession of a very few individuals, and the poor were all the poorer in comparison; despotism was rampant, and royalty commanded at will the unpaid services of the million.

Near the site of the Brazen Palace of Anuradhapura are several dagobas, partially hidden by rank tropical verdure. One of these peculiar structures was originally over four hundred feet in height, antedating the Christian era by many years. Does the reader realize what an amount of solid masonry such a structure represents? When we say that this dagoba was nearly twice the height of Bunker Hill Monument, and that it was three hundred and sixty feet in diameter at the base, the comparison may aid the imagination. Verily, nothing but the Egyptian pyramids compare in magnitude with these shrines of Ceylon, while no modern engineering enterprise excels in immensity the artificial lakes which were created upon her surface. One writer has gone into a careful calculation regarding the structure, and says that it contained material enough originally to build a wall ten feet high from London to Edinburgh.

These peculiarly shaped dagobas are scattered all over the island, each being the receptacle of some saintly relic. Tradition says they are thus formed to resemble a bubble floating upon the water, but they are really bell-shaped, and most of them have a low, ornamental spire. Near the summit is the secret chamber wherein is deposited the sacred treasure. Time effaces all mundane things. With the exception of the Temple of the Tooth, at Kandy, no one can say what special relic any one of these remarkable structures was originally designed to shelter.

Let us quote for the reader's edification an ancient native description of this famous city of the plain when it was in its glory. It is a literal translation from the original:—

"The magnificent city of Anuradhapura is refulgent from the numerous temples and palaces whose golden pinnacles glitter in the sky. The sides of its streets are strewed with black sand; they are spanned with arches bearing flags of gold and silver; on either side are vessels of the same precious metals, containing flowers; and in niches are statues holding lamps of great value. In the streets are multitudes of people, armed with bows and arrows; also men powerful as gods, who with their huge swords could cut asunder a tusk elephant at one blow. Elephants, horses, carts, and myriads of people are constantly passing and repassing. There are jugglers, dancers, and musicians of various nations, whose chank shells and other musical instruments are ornamented with gold. The distance from the principal gate to the opposite gate is four gaws (sixteen miles); and from the north gate to the south gate four gaws. The principal streets are Moon Street, Great King Street, and Great Sandy Street. In Chandrawakkawidiya are eleven thousand houses, many of them being two stories in height; the smaller streets are innumerable. The palace has immense ranges of buildings, some of two, others of three stories in height; and its subterranean apartments are of great extent."

Sir J. E. Tennent gathers from various ancient sources, including the veritable Mahawanso, that Anuradhapura, between four and five centuries before Christ, contained the temples of various religions,—"temples and palaces whose golden pinnacles glittered in the sky,"—besides spacious public gardens and free baths, together with almshouses and hospitals, in which animals as well as human beings were tenderly cared for.

One king gave the "corn of a thousand fields" for the support of the hospitals, another set aside a certain quantity of rice to feed the squirrels which frequented the city gardens, while a third monarch displayed his skill in treating the diseases of elephants, horses, and domestic cattle. The streets were lined with grand shops and bazaars. On festive occasions, barbers and dressers were stationed at each entrance to the capital for the convenience of strangers who visited the city. Public officials vied with each other in their patriotic deeds designed for the public good.

In one corner of the widespread ruins of Anuradhapura there is now a small village, with a Christian mission and school for the native children. There are also a few bazaars, a post-office, telegraph station, and a court house, which serve, by affording a strong contrast to the former splendor which reigned here, to emphasize the historic grandeur of the defunct capital.

CHAPTER IV.

Oriental Dagobas.—Ancient City of Pollonarua.—Laid out like our Modern Capitals.—Unexplored Ruins.—Elaborate Stone Carvings.—Colossal Stone Figure.—The "Buried Cities."—The Singhalese not a Progressive People.—Modern History of Ceylon.—Captured by the English.—The "Resplendent Island."—Commercial Prosperity.—Increasing Foreign Population.—Under English Rule.—Native Soldiers.—Christian Sects and Churches.—Roman Catholic Church.—Expulsion of the Jesuits.

The very interesting and in many respects unique ruins of Anuradhapura, like those pertaining to the city of Pollonarua, with its curious and enormous mass of crumbling brick-work in the shape of a dagoba surmounted by a temple, are supposed to have been thus mouldering in the dust for more than six centuries. These dagobas, doting with age, as we have shown, are relic shrines, like in purpose to the pagodas of Burmah, which they somewhat resemble. Their substantial outside finish must have given them very much the appearance of being built of pure white marble. In dimensions they are exceeded only by the pyramids of Ghizeh, but there is no genius or architectural excellence evinced in the construction of either. Judged by the light of our day, there is no legitimate reason for their existence. Religious fanaticism gave birth to one, and personal pride to the other. They neither subserve the purpose of utility nor of beauty. As monuments of personal aggrandizement, or as individual memorials, what total failures they have proved! Think for a single moment of the vast contrast between either of the Egyptian pyramids, or these bell-shaped dagobas, with their plain stuccoed coverings, and that modern shrine and tomb combined,—the Taj Mahal of Agra. The pyramids and dagobas are crude, barbaric embodiments of bulk and imposing loftiness; the other is a realization in marble of a poetic dream. The former are remarkable only for magnitude; the latter, for its exquisite grace.

There is sufficient evidence still left us to show that the olden city of Pollonarua was laid out in a perfectly systematic way, and built up in the most regular manner. Its founders evidently started with a well-perfected purpose. It was not a chance settlement of a few cabins, which gradually increased hither and thither in various directions until it assumed the proportions of a metropolis. Notwithstanding the present confusion, the general features of its topography are clearly discernible amid the mounds of mouldering material. The main street from the principal entrance-gate continued perfectly straight for four miles between royal palms to the opposite extreme of the city, crossed at right angles in the centre by a similar thoroughfare, thus forming two main streets, which terminated at four great gates of entrance and exit to and from the town,—north, east, south, and west. From these main streets radiated lateral and smaller roadways, evidently occupied by humbler dwellings, together with an occasional temple or other public building. The ruins of what is known as the Treasure House of Pollonarua are unusually interesting, as exhibiting some of the finest and best preserved bas-reliefs to be found in Ceylon, and as showing also certain marked peculiarities of skill in architecture which prevailed in pre-Christian times. On either side of the principal thoroughfares of the city were handsome and substantial dwellings, palaces, and sacred temples. The latter, with their gorgeous gilded domes, were dedicated to various pagan gods. Other spacious buildings and open areas were devoted to pleasure entertainments for the masses of the people, not unlike the modern idea of public gardens and outdoor theatres.

Here and there labyrinths of unexplored ruins are entirely hidden by lofty, broad-limbed trees and a tangle of low, dense shrub, as though the big city had been originally built in a forest. We pause, and gaze thoughtfully at the desolation which speaks so emphatically in its dumb way. It is the language in which the decline and fall of great empires is written,—monuments of mutability.

"Tully was not so eloquent as thee,
Thou nameless column with the buried base."

It is not to be wondered at that learned European antiquarians make pilgrimages hither to see with their own eyes what others have graphically described, and to translate for themselves these black-letter records of by-gone ages. We met at Pollonarua one enthusiastic traveler who had neither eyes nor ears for anything else but that which related to the almost forgotten past. The mouldering ruins of Ceylon were food and drink to him, with which he gorged himself to repletion. Each new student of antiquity who comes hither, being informed of the progress of those who preceded him, takes up the thread of discovery where they left it, and adds something to illumine the darkness which enshrouds these sombre ruins.

It could not always have been peaceful in these populous cities of the past, where strange gods and strange customs prevailed. The imagination easily depicts dire tragedies and bloody conflicts which must have drenched their broad avenues with blood. Such has been the history of the world since the beginning of time.

The best-preserved construction amid all the ruins is a Buddhist rock-temple, which, having been hewn out of the native stone, is still intact, though supposed to date back three hundred years before our era. It is only a small chamber about twenty feet square, containing an altar and three stone figures of Buddha in different positions, sitting, reclining, and standing. The entrance to the chamber is an archway; on either side, inscriptions are engraven in the Pali language, but these, we were informed, had never been translated. The native rock, from which the small temple is cut, rises abruptly from the level plain.

Anuradhapura, as wonderful in its way as Pompeii or Herculaneum, is known as the ancient capital of Ceylon, and Pollonarua as the mediæval, but even the former is antedated by other half-buried cities in the island, that of Bintenne, for instance, which exhibits ruins of great interest and of admitted antiquity. There is a dagoba here which is spoken of by the former Dutch occupants of the island, in A. D. 1602, as being still in good preservation, surmounted by a gilded dome, while its smooth, white exterior was quite unblemished. The wear and tear of the centuries has not yet obliterated this monument.

These dagobas, shaped like half an eggshell, are very similar to the topes of India proper. The interior consists of earth and sun-dried clay, built about and rendered substantial with burned bricks and tiles, the whole being coated on the exterior with a stone-like mortar or chunam. The burned bricks which are found in the débris of the "buried cities" have their form quite perfect, and were so well fired when made that they still retain their sharpness and consistency. The best examples of brick-work are to be found among the ruins of Pollonarua, where the mortar that was originally used shows the remains of the burned pearl-oyster shells from which it was made. The principle of the true arch secured by its keystone does not seem to have been understood by the people of that period in this island, though what is called the false arch, produced by projecting one layer of bricks beyond another, is clearly shown. The carving in stone was carried to a high degree of excellence, and is still in good preservation, as shown upon slabs, risers to steps, and on octangular columns of graceful proportions. The entrance to some of the cave-temples also exhibits ability in the carving of stone which is of no mean quality, depicting innumerable single figures and many groups. None of the Indian topes are more than half as large as these Ceylon dagobas. The latter were solid, hemispherical masses, standing upon a raised square platform of granite six or eight feet high, and approached by broad stone steps. The incrustation of the dome-like edifice was after the fashion of our modern stucco process, except that it was very much more thickly laid on. The preparation consisted of lime, cocoanut water, and the glutinous juice of a fruit which grows upon the paragaha-tree. This compound was pure white when dried and hardened, receiving a polish like glass, and was remarkable for durability.

We were told of, but did not see, carved stone capitals and elaborately draped monoliths, found among the ruins of Bintenne, which represented early perfection in architecture as displayed in a region now indeed barbaric, but where a civilization flourished in the far past in all the pride and pomp of oriental grandeur. To-day, the jackal and the panther, unmolested by man, prowl about the spot in search of prey.

When the hosts who formed the population of these long-buried cities disappeared we may not know, nor what fate befell them. There are many intelligent theories about the matter, but very little positive evidence. The most plausible supposition would seem to be that a devastating famine must have been the fatal agent. Most of the works which these people left behind them, except the bell-shaped and nearly indestructible dagobas, are now covered with rank vegetation. The first structure of this character erected at Anuradhapura is still extant, and is believed by some writers to be one of the oldest architectural monuments in India. With this conclusion we certainly cannot agree, as the chronicles tell us it was raised by King Tissa, at the close of the third century before Christ, over the collar-bone of Buddha. The author has seen at Benares many sacred structures, some in ruins, which are much more ancient. After all, these milestones of the centuries afford us little data by which to unravel the mysteries of the past in Ceylon. They are only isolated mementos, forming disjointed links in the chain connecting us with by-gone ages, mute but eloquent witnesses of a former and high degree of civilization. The most erudite antiquarian finds no coherent or reliable history in such crumbling monuments; generalities only can be deduced from them, however suggestive and interesting they may prove.

Neither the ancient nor the modern Singhalese seem to have had any distinctive order of architecture, though the variety which they adopted was infinite. Here, among these half-defaced ruins, one detects Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Moorish inspirations, calculated to puzzle the scientist as to their probable origin. The singular conglomerates of our own day are not more confusing than some of the best-preserved specimens to be found in these ruined cities of ancient Ceylon.

Another notable object of antiquarian interest in the island is recalled in this connection. It is that of a colossal, upright figure of Buddha, a figure hewn out of the solid rock, to which it is still attached, though it is statuesque and not in bas-relief, the original material only furnishing its support at the back. This rude piece of sculpture is fifty feet in height and otherwise duly proportioned, vividly recalling the mammoth bronze statue of Dai-Butsu at Kamakura, in Japan, which is nearly sixty feet in height, though it is represented in a sitting position. Within this statue fifty people can stand together, the interior being fitted like a chapel. As regards antiquity, the Japanese figure is supposed to be but six centuries in age, while that of Ceylon is surely three times as old, and probably four. The great Singhalese statue is now in the jungle, which has grown up about it during centuries of neglect, near to the great Tank of Kalawera. The surrounding rocks were in ancient days turned into a cave-temple with infinite labor, by hewing and excavating them into chambers of suitable dimensions. Without excellent tools of steel and iron, very nearly approaching in efficiency those of our own time, this could not possibly have been accomplished.

The carved pillars, fluted, beveled, and spiral columns, mounds of ruined masonry, crumbling flights of stone steps, ornamental fragments of temples, and granite statues skillfully wrought which are scattered in all directions throughout the jungle, in some instances overgrown by tall trees, attest both departed greatness and far-reaching antiquity. Broken bricks, tiles, and sculpture are so knit together by snakelike tree-roots, while shaded by their lofty branches, as to form one solid mass for hundreds of rods together, dotted here and there by simple wild flowers which modestly rear their delicate petals and perfume the air. One represents the tomb of decayed magnificence and oriental luxury, the other is the sweet and simple emblem of Nature undefiled. Thus she covers up the wrinkles of age with blooming vegetation, screening the mouldering architecture of a forgotten race beneath fresh arboreal and floral beauties. There still remain, though partially buried beneath the earth, the suggestive memorials of a prosperous and energetic people, who were once the possessors of this beautiful Indian isle. These decaying monuments are at the same time indisputable evidence of the high civilization which once existed here, and also, sad to realize, of the deterioration of the Singhalese as a people. However gradual may have been the decadence of the race from the proud condition of their ancestors who built the "buried cities," the contrast is so strong to-day as to seem singularly abrupt, notwithstanding the intervening centuries.

Fifty years ago, it was only at the risk of one's life that these famous ruins of Ceylon could be reached. Such expeditions were not even attempted without a strong escort and governmental aid. Hostile native tribes and equally fatal malarial influences, together with almost impassable forests and unbridged rivers, were all arrayed against the curious visitor. This is now changed so that enterprising travelers can with but little trouble enjoy a view of some of the most extraordinary monuments to be found in the East, and which are of much more than ordinary archæologic and artistic interest.

In this neighborhood, at Vigitapora, are the ruins of a city, once a royal residence, which is more ancient than Anuradhapura. This place was a populous centre five hundred years before the Christian era, of which there seems to be little if any record preserved, even in the comprehensive pages of that national text-book, the Mahawanso.

The native tribes of Ceylon cannot be said to form a progressive race, even under the advantages which modern civilization affords them. Their present condition is one of dormancy. Those who form the rising generation, after enjoying school advantages to a certain degree, on arriving at the age of responsibility lapse, with some exceptions, into the condition of their parents. Thus many of our Western Indians, who in youth have been educated in schools presided over by the whites, return finally to their native surroundings, promptly adopting from choice the barbaric methods and rude life of their roaming tribes. There is a certain wild instinct which it seems almost impossible to eradicate. A few native Singhalese have availed themselves of the opportunities freely extended to them, and have risen to position and influence both with their own race and the European population. There are also descendants of English fathers and native mothers, who, after enjoying special advantages, have developed into intelligent manhood, and who form a recognized element of the community. A native Singhalese is, or was very lately, judge of the supreme court of Ceylon, while the offices of attorney-general and government solicitor were, and we believe still are, filled by natives. Others of the same race are respected as county judges, magistrates, and leading barristers.

So far as current history can be relied upon, we find that Ceylon was, from five hundred years and more before the Christian era up to the time of its annexation to Great Britain, the almost constant victim of foreign and civil wars. Indeed, this seems to have been the chronic condition of the world at that period. The Portuguese first and the Dutch afterward took possession of the island, the latter being finally expelled by the English, who promptly fortified and have held it ever since.

The rapacity, bigotry, and cruelty which characterized the rule of the Portuguese in Ceylon forms one of the darkest pages in the history of European colonization. An eminent writer upon the period says very tersely and truly that these people first appeared in the Indian Ocean in the threefold character of merchants, missionaries, and pirates, more fully illustrating the last named than the other two occupations. No other nation save Spain has written its autobiography in such glaring letters of blood.

When Ceylon was first acquired by the English, it was placed in the hands of the East India Company, being so intimately connected with India proper, of which that organization held control. In 1798, however, it became a possession of the English crown, and was confirmed to Great Britain by the Treaty of Amiens. The dominion of the Portuguese and the Dutch lasted for nearly the same length of time, each holding the island for about one hundred and forty years, both periods being characterized by innumerable conflicts with the natives and with foreign invaders. The Portuguese, and especially the Dutch, left lasting memorials of their occupancy in the form of fortifications, churches, stone dwellings, and the like, which were so well built as to be still serviceable.

The rich pearl fisheries, and the native product of choice, much coveted gems, were constant allurements for the possession of the "resplendent island," causing the surrounding powers to regard it as a vast treasure house, upon whose possessors they cast envious eyes. On taking the island, as already intimated, England adopted prompt and efficient measures to fortify her possession in such a manner that no one has since cared to dispute her claim. In such matters the English have always pursued an omnivorous policy. No spot of land seems too small or too insignificant to tempt their cupidity, and none too large for their capacious maw,—India, for example.

As in the instance of Malta, also under British rule for so many years, Ceylon has thriven and prospered wonderfully, that is to say in a commercial point of view, which after all is the conventional test. Would that the same commendation might apply to the moral and educational condition of the Singhalese! However, where peace and plenty, together with seeming content, prevail, let us not seek for hidden troubles. The island is to-day indisputably a most flourishing agricultural colony, self-supporting, except as regards the military establishment maintained by the home government, which expense is not justly chargeable to Ceylon, whose peaceable inhabitants require no military force to keep them in subjection. The simplest police organization accomplishes this, though in former times, under insufferable tyranny of petty princes and foreign invaders, the Singhalese proved that they could fight for, and hold their own against considerable odds. Unless outrageously oppressed, they are of too peaceable a nature to arouse themselves to open rebellion.

A simple glance at the situation shows great progress throughout the island since it came into the possession of Great Britain. Barbarous habits and institutions have been gradually reformed; taxes which were formerly exhaustive have been greatly modified, and in many instances entirely removed; from a condition of slavery, the masses have been made free, now enjoying entire personal liberty; the districts of the interior, heretofore inaccessible, have been open to easy and safe travel; compulsory labor has been abolished; education has been brought within the reach of all; large sections of territory have been drained, and brought from an unhealthy condition to one of comparative salubrity; mild and just laws are in operation; civil wars and foreign invasions have ceased, and a peaceful condition of every-day life is established. Such are some of the great improvements which have accrued under English rule. This statement is made as a simple matter of fact, not as an argument that England has a legitimate right on the island, any more than she has in India. But the prosperity of the Singhalese is no less a fact, and very pleasant to record.

The population of the island has more than doubled under the present dynasty, while its marketable products have quadrupled. A few pertinent facts occur to us in this connection which must surely interest the general reader.

There are now about three hundred miles of railway in operation on the island, and nearly as many more projected. To supplement this means of transportation there are a hundred and seventy-five miles of organized canal service, a legacy inherited from the Dutch. There are two hundred and fifty post-offices, besides forty telegraphic stations, in connection with which are sixteen hundred miles of telegraphic wire in position. In this march of progress the interests of education have not been entirely forgotten, and upon the whole, the Singhalese have very little to complain of as regards the government under which they live. Fate, however, has decreed that this people, as a nationality, shall gradually pass away and be forgotten, like other aboriginal races. The Alaska Indians are not more surely dying out than are these Singhalese. The most sensitive matter with them and with nearly all orientals is touching the sacredness of their religious rites. With these the English government never interferes, neither here nor in India proper. As we have shown, the orientals are a peaceable race, and will submit to a considerable degree of arbitrary rule touching their political relations, but the moment their religious convictions and ceremonies are interfered with, they become frenzied.

It will be remembered that the great Indian mutiny, which occurred in 1857, was at first incited in the ranks of the natives at Cawnpore and elsewhere by what was thought to be an intentional insult to their religious convictions.

The English, soon after establishing themselves in Ceylon, tried the experiment of forming a battalion of infantry, composed of the natives. When being trained to service, it was nearly impossible, we are told, to teach them not to fire away their ramrods as the real missiles of destruction. There is a certain effeminacy inherent in all rice-eating nations, and yet what did not the former people of this island achieve in the building of great cities, grand palaces, and temples of stone? It would almost seem as though the Singhalese of the present day could not belong to the same race as the people who built Anuradhapura before Christ was born.

Many of the prominent Christian sects have churches and missionary establishments in the island. It has long been a popular missionary field with several denominations, more particularly in the northern part. The most numerous is that of the Roman Catholic Church, whose leaders began their system of proselyting the natives as far back as the first establishment of the Portuguese in Ceylon. The faith which they presented addressed itself with all its theatrical effect to the fancy of the ignorant Singhalese, especially as the cunning priests took good care to mingle certain local Buddhistical ceremonies with those which they introduced. There are shrines and temples in Ceylon, in what are called Roman Catholic districts, where the images of Buddha and the Virgin Mary both hold honored places. Is the worship of one any more idolatrous than of the other? It has been well said that the idol is the measure of the worshiper. People who never thought for themselves were thus attracted. They formed a class whose very ignorance made them easy converts. Had they been able or inclined to reason upon the subject, it would not have been permitted. They had to swallow the creed as a whole, at a single gulp, being approached with the sword in one hand and the cross in the other.

Absolutism in faith is synonymous with ignorance. The right of inquiry is the privilege of every human being, though it is denounced as heretical by the Romish Church. Only falsehood fears investigation; only chicanery dreads the light. The hateful Inquisition tried to carry on its bloodthirsty practices here under Portuguese rule, but was summarily driven out of Ceylon by the Dutch, with its vile nunneries and its instruments of torture. So the French, during their brief possession of the island of Malta, expelled a similar Jesuitical crew from Valetta, not, however, before they had recorded their diabolical deeds in letters of blood, now burning a "heretic," and now mangling an intractable convert.

CHAPTER V.

Food of the People.—Rice Cultivation.—Vast Artificial Lakes.—The Stone Tanks of Aden.—Parched Australia.—Coffee Culture.—Severe Reverses among Planters.—Tea Culture.—Cinchona Plantations.—Heavy Exportation of Tea.—Cacao Culture.—A Coffee Plantation described.—Domesticated Snakes.—The Cinnamon-Tree.—Cinnamon Gardens a Disappointment.—Picturesque Dwelling's.—Forest Lands.—The Ceylon Jungle.—Native Cabinet Woods.—Night in a Tropical Forest.—Rhododendrons.

The principal food of a nation is a most important factor, not only in judging of its means of support, but also as regards the mental and physical character of the people themselves. Rice has been the staple product and support of Ceylon, as it has been of the population of India and China, from time immemorial. There are to-day some eight hundred thousand acres of land devoted to the raising of this cereal upon the island; there should be twice that area devoted to the purpose, to meet the imperative wants of the present population. The unsuitability of the climate for ripening wheat is more than compensated for by its prodigal yield of rice, producing two crops annually, where water can be freely obtained. This grain is proven by scientific experiment to contain more of the several essential elements for support of the human body than any other which is grown. As is well known, in cultivating rice, it requires to be flooded, started in fact under water, after being first planted, and also to be more than once submerged during its growth and ripening. To facilitate the production of this nutritious grain, the great tanks already referred to were originally built, in which to preserve, for periodical use, the water which flows freely enough from the mountain region during the rainy season, but when the dry period sets in, the rivers become thread-like streams, fed only by a few inconsiderable springs which exist in the hills. The oldest of these immense reservoirs is believed to date back some centuries before Christ's appearance upon earth, evincing by their construction a degree of organized thrift and effective energy hardly equaled in our time.

The tanks not only saved the precious water from running to waste, but, being tapped at suitable intervals, conducted it by sluiceways and canals, distributing it to those localities where it was needed, and at the exact time when it was wanted.

The chief article of native consumption should also be one of export from a country so admirably adapted to its production. This is not now the case; indeed, it is and has long been one of the principal imports from India and elsewhere. It is estimated that every native adult who can get it consumes a bushel of rice each month in the year. To the Singhalese rice is what wheat is to the average American, namely, the staff of life. To promote its cultivation, the English government should repair the neglected tanks, great and small. There is evidence sufficient to prove that Ceylon raised all she required of this staple for home consumption when her agricultural masses could get the necessary water. In some localities where the rain is plentiful, the rice planter is dependent upon the natural supply; but in most parts of the island its cultivation is not even attempted unless a certain artificial supply of water is first secured by means of canals and reservoirs, it being quite as necessary as the very seed itself. There is one great advantage which the planters enjoy in Ceylon over most other regions; that is, the abundance and cheapness of free labor obtainable at any season of the year. Coolies by the thousand are always ready to come hither from southern India at the harvest time. As many come regularly as can get employment.

When the island was at the height of its prosperity, there were in its various parts at least thirty tanks of enormous proportions, and about seven hundred of all sizes. In the nineteenth century, we attain the object of water preserves by building structures of granite, like the Croton and Cochituate reservoirs of New York and Boston, not nearly so large nor any more efficient than these of the time referred to. But to do this we have all the appliances of powerful machinery and labor-saving methods, while these Herculean results in Ceylon were achieved by human hands alone. One system is the consummation of a high state of civilization, and of well-paid skillful industry; the other, like the enduring pyramids, was the outcome of a barbaric period, and of forced manual labor. While examining one of the vast embankments, built, like all others, partly of stone but mainly of earth, to securely hold the artificial lake, the author was accompanied by an intelligent native, who was a local official of the government. It was natural to remark upon the achievement of so great a work by primitive means. "Yes," said he, "every bushel of earth which forms this broad embankment, extending for miles, was brought by the single basketful from yonder mountain upon the heads of men and women."

The remains of one of these capacious tanks which stimulated industry and insured abundant crops in Ceylon so long ago is to be seen at Kalawewa, near Dambula, already spoken of, and is known to have been built fourteen centuries since. It was originally some forty miles in circumference, covering seven square miles, with a depth of twenty feet of water, and having an embankment of stone twelve miles long laid in solid tiers, with the large blocks ingeniously secured together. These tanks are found in a more or less ruinous condition all over the island, but especially at the north, where they were more required than in the southern portion. The conserving of water in large quantities for agricultural and other necessary purposes was naturally one of the earliest developed ideas of civilized people. Aden, the important peninsula commanding the entrance of the Red Sea, now held and fortified by England, is situated in a rainless zone, so that the inhabitants see no fall of that invaluable element sometimes for two years together, though when it does visit them it comes in floods. The dependence here for the needed supply in the dry season is upon enormous tanks hewn out of the solid rocks with infinite labor, and connected with each other by a well-devised system. These tanks, being cut in the solid rock, as we have said, are virtually indestructible, and form the means of supply for the inhabitants to-day, as they did thousands of years ago. The great antiquity of the Aden water reservoirs renders them intensely interesting, since they are believed to be as old as the most ancient monuments in existence raised by the hand of man,—not excepting those of Egypt.

In entering the harbor of Aden, one passes through the dangerous Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, so called by the Arabs, and signifying the "Gate of Tears," because it has proved so fatal to human life and to commerce. The author well remembers, when passing this famous point, seeing the tall masts of a big European steamship still standing above the water of the strait. A few days previously, the vessel had been swept by the treacherous currents upon some of the many sunken rocks, and had instantly gone to the bottom with all her crew on board.

The water preserves of Ceylon are of all sizes, from widespread lakes to mere ponds, designed to irrigate circumscribed districts. There was a time when each town and village, at least all that lay to the north of the mountain range which divides the island, had its reservoir. The first one spoken of in this chapter was built by King Penduwasa, and was restored by the English so late as 1867. It covers an area of over three thousand acres, and is of inestimable value to the agricultural interests of the district. It seems that as Egyptian monarchs were wont to build pyramids to mark the glory of their several dynasties, so the Kandian kings and earlier rulers of Ceylon each sought to excel his predecessor by constructing larger tanks, thus elaborating the means of irrigation and increasing the productiveness of the island. Sixteen of these useful reservoirs are credited to one of the latest kings of Kandy.

Could this grand and effective principle of irrigation be applied to the plains of Australia, what a blessing it might prove. The oft-recurring periods of drought, extending from Brisbane in the north to Adelaide in the south, are now a fatal blight to agricultural enterprise. The Murray River, which at certain seasons of the year is navigable for nearly or quite one thousand miles, now runs to waste, becoming a mere brook half the year; and sheep and cattle sometimes die of thirst by thousands, so that many wealthy Englishmen engaged in sheep-raising have been made paupers in a single season. It only needs the construction of a series of water-saving tanks upon the course of the Murray to successfully water millions of acres of naturally fertile soil, and to insure the country against anything like a water famine when the dry season sets in. Why the people who are in authority ignore such simple facts is a standing marvel.

We have said that rice was the staple product of the island, and it is still so; but it was not long ago that Ceylon was also famous for the amount of excellent coffee which it produced and exported. For a while, it seemed destined to rival all the rest of the world in this important article. Its cultivation was begun here upon a large scale in 1825, in the vicinity of Peradenia, where the soil and climate proved to be so favorable that speculators came hither in large numbers from great distances, but especially from England, to establish plantations, though the coffee-tree is not indigenous to Ceylon. Thousands of acres of forest and dense jungle were cleared and burned over in the neighborhood of Kandy alone, at great expense and labor, to prepare the ground for coffee planting. There was at one time so much speculative energy evinced in this direction that nearly every local government official was more or less engaged in it, embarking therein all the money which he possessed or which he could borrow. Well-engineered roads were opened into new and available districts, while numerous substantial bridges were erected over previously impassable streams, and thriving villages sprang up as if by magic amid what was formerly wild and inaccessible jungle. In the course of twenty years, the product had risen to so large an aggregate figure as to astonish the commercial world, and the price of the berry was consequently reduced in all the markets of Europe. Such good fortune, it was finally discovered, was not destined to fall unalloyed to the share of the Ceylon planters.

Some sacrifice must attend upon all such enterprises. In clearing the forest lands for coffee planting, a most reckless waste was practiced in Ceylon. Magnificent groves of valuable wood were cut down and ruthlessly burned to ashes, among which were many of the precious cabinet woods so highly prized all over the world. Among others were some grand banian-trees, as we were told, which had a hundred great stems and a thousand lesser ones. There are not many such trees as these to be found in the known world.

It is but a few years since that a nearly simultaneous blight attacked most of the coffee plantations on the island, coming in the form of a strange fungus, which choked the breathing pores of the leaves, and thus rapidly exhausted the trees. The Ceylon planters were struck with consternation for a period; years of uninterrupted good crops had filled them with confidence, so they had annually, by liberal expenditure, cleared more ground, spreading out their plantations in all directions. Large sums of money were sent out from England by individuals desirous to enter into so promising a speculation, and the aggregate sum said to have been expended in this purpose is almost incredible. But the blight proved to be of the most serious character, and was so wholesale as to literally impoverish many previously rich agriculturists who had embarked their all in the business. The island is very rich in fungi, and this one which had so effectually blighted the coffee plants was quite new to science. That which was for a time so serious a pecuniary loss to this island proved to be of great commercial advantage to Java and Brazil, whose production in the same line was vastly stimulated thereby, while the coffee which they sent to market realized more remunerative prices than when brought in competition with that of Ceylon. Since this experience, a large number of the planters have gradually turned their attention to raising tea, together with the production of quinine from the cinchona-tree, and so far as could be learned, they have met with good pecuniary success. An intelligent resident of Colombo estimates that there are fifty thousand acres of the last-named tree under profitable cultivation at the present time. It is found that cinchona will thrive in the mountain districts, considerably above the height at which coffee ceases to be advantageously cultivated, while, unlike tea or coffee, it requires no special care after it has been once fairly started. The production of quinine, which has now reached mammoth proportions, hardly keeps pace with the growing consumption of the drug by the world at large. There was over one million dollars' worth of cinchona bark exported in 1892 from Colombo.

The export of tea in 1890 rose to the considerable amount of forty-seven million pounds, which aggregate we have evidence to show has been since increased annually. The commercial importance of Ceylon may be said to rest at the present time mainly upon the raising of tea. The yield per acre is considerably larger than it is in India, while the access to market is much better than it is at Assam or Cachar. The Ceylon product is shipped in its natural condition, that is to say, it is pure, while that of China and Japan is systematically adulterated and artificially colored. There are about two thousand plantations upon the island occupied for tea raising, averaging two hundred acres each of rolling upland, and it is confidently believed here that China and India will eventually be distanced by Ceylon in the matter of supplying the markets of the world with tea. While coffee cannot be cultivated successfully much higher than four thousand feet above sea level in this island, tea thrives at almost any height in this latitude, as it does in northern India, round about Darjeeling. The only fear seems now to be that of over-production. The last year's crop was estimated to slightly exceed eighty million pounds, and its quality was so satisfactory as to command good prices and a quick market.

There are several special advantages which tea culture possesses over that of coffee; one is the ease with which the tea planter can get rid of any pest which attacks his trees. The coffee plant gives, as a rule, but one crop annually, the blossom season being narrowed to four or five weeks, and if that fails because of bugs or disease of any sort, the year's labor is in vain. In the cultivation of tea, there is the chance of plucking leaves nearly every month of the year. If an emergency arises, the planter has only to clear his bushes of every leaf and, gathering the same, burn them. The insects are thus totally destroyed, while the bushes are sure to produce a new covering of verdure in a few weeks. There are to-day nearly three hundred thousand acres devoted to tea culture in Ceylon.

The planters have been giving attention of late years to the raising of cacao, the chocolate plant, and some large plantations have proved to be very profitable, the demand being considerably beyond the present supply. The article produced here stands as the best in the London market, and commands the highest price. Over twenty thousand hundredweight were exported from Colombo in 1892. That of the year just past, we were assured, would show a considerable increase over this amount.

Let it not be understood that coffee is no longer raised on the island. The fact is that the blight spoken of seems to have in a considerable degree exhausted itself, and many coffee planters are again rejoicing over paying crops, as abundantly proven by the amount of the berry which is still exported. It may be almost doubted if there is any such thing as unmitigated evil; the brief though serious blight of the coffee plant in Ceylon has proved to be a blessing in disguise. Finite judgment is often delusive. Joseph's brethren, who sold him into slavery, meant it unto evil, but God meant it unto good. The equity of Providence has framed a never-failing law of compensation, though we may not always possess sufficient intelligence to see its application.

A coffee plantation is a charming sight at each stage of the ripening process. Its dark green polished leaves are beautiful examples of tropical foliage, and the white blossoms look like snowflakes gathered in clusters about the tips of the branches, emitting a perfume not so pronounced as, and yet not unlike, that of the tuberose. These odorous flowers are short-lived and drop to the ground almost as quickly as they come, being followed in due course by large crimson berries, quite as ornamental as the flowers and nearly as large as the common New England cherry. Within the pulp the double seeds are ripened which form the coffee berry of commerce. The view of a thrifty plantation at sunrise, when each spray is dripping with refreshing dew and every little branch is diamond-capped, is lovely beyond expression.

A surprise awaited us on one occasion while visiting a coffee plantation near Kandy. Seeing a snake over four feet in length moving along unmolested on the path in front of the bungalow which was occupied by the planter's family, it was quite impossible to suppress an exclamation. Our host smiled pleasantly as he explained that the creature was not only tolerated about the house, but that it was a pet! It seems that these reptiles are often kept to kill and drive away the coffee-rats, as they are called, a certain species of rodents which are often alarmingly abundant on these estates, and terribly destructive to the growing crops. They are twice the size of an ordinary rat, such as is common with us. They feed upon birds, blossoms, and ripe berries of the coffee to an unlimited extent, if not interfered with. The snake is their natural enemy, and is more destructive among them than a well-trained domestic cat would be. In fact, these rats would be more than a match for an ordinary cat. So the fer-de-lance is a great rat destroyer among the sugar plantations of Martinique, a snake which is as poisonous as the cobra of Ceylon. Does the reader remember that it was one of this species of West Indian serpents which bit Josephine, the future empress of France, when she was a mere child in her island home, and that her faithful negro nurse saved the child's life by instantly drawing the poison from the wound with her own lips? At Pará, in Brazil, the author has seen young anacondas six and eight feet long also kept upon the plantations as rat catchers. Any of these serpents make very little of swallowing a rat which they have themselves caught, but they promptly refuse such as have been killed by a trap or other means. The Ceylon cobra cannot cope with the mongoose, whose safety in a conflict with this reptile lies in its extraordinary activity. The mongoose avoids the dash of the cobra and pins it by the back of the neck, persistently maintaining its hold there, in spite of the creature's contortions, until it succeeds in gnawing through and severing the spine.

In Ceylon, ladies sometimes make a pet of the mongoose, and when taken young and reared for this purpose, the soft little hairy creature becomes as affectionate and lap-loving as the most tiny dog, recognizing its mistress above all other persons, and following close upon her footsteps. It looks innocent enough, but the cobra instinctively dreads its presence, and with good reason, for the encounter nine times in ten costs the reptile its life. The natives say that when a continuous fight occurs between these creatures, if the snake succeeds in fixing its fangs in the body of the mongoose, the latter instantly retires and eats of some plant as a preventive to the operation of the poison, and presently returns to renew the conflict until it finally conquers. Though this is a universally believed statement among the common people, we do not give it the least credit.

One other important and staple product of the island should not be forgotten. The cinnamon-tree is indigenous, and is largely cultivated for the valuable bark which it yields. It is estimated that over twenty thousand acres are systematically improved in the raising of cinnamon-trees, a very ancient as well as profitable industry in Ceylon, and one which was held as a monopoly by the Dutch government for a century and more. The monopoly was also maintained by the English, after they assumed control here, but this most unwarrantable embargo has long since been abolished, and it is no longer a restricted article. The tree is grown from the seed, begins to yield at about its eighth year, and continues to do so for a century or more. It does not require a rich soil, but thrives best in a low, sandy plain. A soil in which scarcely anything else will grow except chance weeds seems quite the thing for cinnamon, which, like the cocoanut palm, thrives best near the salt water. In its natural state, it grows to a height of thirty feet; under cultivation, it is pruned down so as to remain at about ten feet or less. It is of the laurel family, but is as hardy as the long-lived olive-tree. The author has seen in southern Spain, near Malaga, orchards of the latter in which were many trees which it was declared were several centuries old, their gnarled and scraggy appearance certainly favoring the statement.

The cinnamon gardens, as they are called, are generally musical with the cooing of turtle-doves, whose plump condition is owing to free living upon the nutritious purple berries of the spice-producing tree. The birds are not interfered with, as the berries have no commercial value, and it should be remembered that the natives do not kill birds or animals for food. Sometimes English sportsmen go into the plantations and get a bag of this palatable game, though it seems cruel to shoot such, delicate and pretty creatures. Dove-pie, however,—this between ourselves,—is by no means to be despised, especially where, as in Ceylon, beef and mutton of a good quality are so rare.

On the occasion of the author's first visit to Colombo, the Cinnamon Gardens in the immediate suburbs were much lauded, and they were in fact one of the first attractions to which strangers were introduced. There was a pleasant promise in the very name, and we had anticipated something not only beautiful to behold, but which would prove grateful to all the senses. Disappointment was inevitable. Finally, when we reached the grounds, it seemed hardly possible that the broad area of low, scrubby jungle and thick undergrowth which bore this attractive name could really be the Cinnamon Gardens of which so much poetical fiction has been written. It seems rather an anomaly, but the fact is, clove oil is not produced by the pungent spice whose name it bears, but is extracted from the refuse of the cinnamon bark. The "gardens" referred to were misnamed. There was no garden about them. It was simply a plantation of thick-growing shrubbery, apparently much neglected. The spacious area is now improved by picturesque European residences, spacious domestic flower plants, and croquet grounds, carpeted with velvety grass. Flourishing fruit trees and nodding palms render the place attractive at this writing. While strolling or driving through a cinnamon plantation,—and there are plenty of them all over the island, especially in the south,—one seeks in vain to detect the perfume derived from the spice so well known. It is not the bloom nor the berry which creates this scent, but when the bark is being gathered at the semi-annual harvest, the aroma is distinct enough. The spice of commerce is the ground inner bark of the tree, the branches of which are cut, peeled, and dried in the sun. The harvests occur about Christmas and again in midsummer. By trimming the smaller branches the productiveness of the main portion is improved, and the pungency of the bark is increased. Cinnamon was the cassia of the Jews and ancients. Probably Solomon's ships brought the much-prized spice from this island. The consumers generally did not know from whence it came, that was a royal secret, and much mystery hung about the matter, while the cost was at that period so high as to make it an exclusive article,—that is to say, it was only to be afforded by the rich.

The uncleared woodland of the island is very extensive. The forests must have been of much smaller area when the population was quadruple its present aggregate, particularly in the north, where the extensive ruins show how vast in numbers the population must have been. It is estimated by good authority that there are two and a half million acres of wild, thickly wooded country, which contain all the varieties of trees peculiar to the equatorial regions. It is difficult to overestimate the grandeur of the primeval forest of Ceylon, with its solemn arches and avenues of evergreen, its majestic palms, and tall tree-ferns shading silver lakelets. Every pond, large or small, is sure to be the resort of tall wading-birds and waterfowls. Presently we come upon a spot where the earth is flecked with golden sunlight, shifting and evanescent, sifted, as it were, through the gently vibrating leaves, softly gilding the sombre drapery of the forest. There is nothing monotonous in a tropical wood; individual outlines and coloring are in endless variety. The contrasts presented in a circumscribed space are infinite, while a never-fading bloom overspreads the whole. Now and again the eye takes in a ravishingly beautiful effect through the deep-blue vistas stretching away into mysterious depths. Pressing forward, we come upon a wilderness of splendid trees, running up seventy or eighty feet towards the sky without a branch, then spreading out into a glorious canopy of green. Would that we could fully impress the reader with the unflagging charm of an equatorial forest. "You will find something far greater in the woods than you will find in books," said St. Bernard.

Professor Agassiz recorded the names of three hundred varieties of trees growing in the area of one square mile in a Brazilian forest. The same abundance and variety exist in Ceylon.

The beauty and value of the native woods of this island cannot fail promptly to attract the notice and admiration of the stranger. The calamander, ebony, and satinwood trees, familiar to us as choice cabinet woods, are conspicuous and ornamental, besides which there are in these forests many other valuable species. Externally, the ebony-tree appears as though its trunk had been charred. Beneath the bark, the wood is white as far as the heart, which is so black as to have passed into a synonym. It is this inner portion which forms the wood of commerce. The sura or tulip-tree produces a material of extraordinary firmness of texture, reddish-brown in color. It bears a yellow blossom similar in form to the tulip; hence its name. It is known in botany as Hibiscus populneus, so called because it has the leaf of the poplar and the flower of the hibiscus. The tamarind, most majestic and beautiful, yields a red wood curiously mottled with black spots, and when polished gives a glass-like surface, but it is too valuable as a fruit-bearer to be freely used for manufacturing purposes or for timber in building. The halmalille-tree gives the most durable and useful substance next to the palm, and is specially adapted to the manufacture of staves for casks; indeed, it is the only wood known on the island which is considered suitable for this purpose. Cooperage is an important industry and a growing one here, as many thousands of casks are required annually in which to export cocoanut oil, not to reckon those employed for storing and transporting that most fiery liquor, Ceylon arrack. Considerable quantities of this intoxicant find their way northward to the continent of India.

The famous buoyant Madras surf-boats are built of this halmalille wood, in the construction of which no nails are used. The several parts are secured by stout leather thongs, the wood being literally sewed together with that article and with cocoanut fibre, wrought into stout, durable cordage. So great and peculiar is the incessant strain upon these small craft employed in an open roadstead that nails will not hold in such light constructions. A certain flexibility is required, which is best obtained in the manner described.

One tree is particularly remembered as we write these lines, a cotton-bearer, though the article it produces is only floss-like, and too short in texture for spinning purposes. It is, however, very generally used for stuffing sofas and chair cushions. This tree is deciduous; the leaves do not appear until after the crimson blossoms have quite covered the branches, producing a very peculiar and pretty effect. When the blossoms fall, the neighboring grounds are carpeted in varied scarlet figures, giving a novel and lovely covering, surpassing the finest product of the looms. After the blossoms are gone, the bright green leaves burst quickly forth in prodigal abundance.

If one chances to be amid these shadows of the forest after nightfall, the scene is totally changed as well as the prevailing sounds that greet the ear. It is then that one hears the short, sharp bark of the jackals, the weird howl of migrating families of flying-foxes, the ceaseless hooting of several species of owls,—one of which is known as the devil-bird because of its uncanny scream,—the croaking of tree-toads and mammoth crickets, mingled with the frequent, distressful cry of some other night bird whose name is unknown,—it is heard but not seen. Through the vistas of the trees flashes of soft light as if from a small torch catch the eye; if it is low and marshy these are like moving balls of fire, doubtless caused by some electric combinations. The dance of the fireflies amid the thick undergrowth is confusing as well as fascinating. One seems to be in fairyland, and looks about for the figure of a sylphid floating upon a gossamer cloud, or a group of fairy revelers tripping upon the blossom-covered ground. Is it all reality, we ask ourselves, or a dream from which we shall presently awake?

The large, brilliant flower of the rhododendron is familiar to New Englanders as growing upon a bush eight or ten feet high. It is annually made quite a feature when in bloom in the Boston Public Garden, but in Ceylon it is much more ambitious, forming forests by itself, and growing to the proportions of a large tree, averaging from forty to fifty feet in height. In the vicinity of Adam's Peak this tree abounds, covering the abrupt sides of that famous elevation almost to its rocky summit, where it is crowned by the small, iron-chained Buddhist temple, thus fastened to secure it against the fierce winds that sometimes sweep these heights.

The prevailing color of the flowers is scarlet, but there are variations showing lovely shades of pink and cream colors. Those which grow at the greatest altitude seem to differ somewhat from the others, and are said to be peculiar to Ceylon, being sixty feet in height, with trunks nearly two feet in diameter.

This is but one among many of the tall flowering trees upon the island. The reader can easily imagine the beautiful effect of a broad mountain side covered with gorgeous rhododendron-trees in full bloom, so abundant that the very atmosphere seems to be scarlet with the strong reflection of the flowers. Like the superb sunset of the north, accompanied by the orange, scarlet, and fiery red of the twilight glow, were this mountain of rhododendrons to be literally reproduced by the painter's art, we should think it an exaggeration.

In the opening month of the year, this regal flower is in full bloom on Adam's Peak, and so continues until July, when it takes its winter's sleep. The green leaves of the species growing high up the mountain are silver-lined, while those lower down are brown on the under side. The former have also stouter stems, and are more stocky in all respects. The latter, to a casual observer, are more delicate in form and more beautiful in color.

CHAPTER VI.

Arboreal King of the Forest.—The Palm Family.—Over-Generous Nature and her Liberal Provisions.—Product of the Cocoanut-Tree.—The Wide-Spreading Banian.—Excellent Public Roads.—Aquatic Birds and Plants.—Native Fruit Trees.—The Mangosteen.—Spice-Bearing Trees.—Treatment of Women.—Singhalese Rural Life.—Physical Character of Tamil Men.—Tree Climbing.—Native Children.—Numerical Relation of the Sexes.—Caste as respected in Ceylon.—Tattooing the Human Body.

Of all vegetable nature, so abundant, prolific, and beautiful in this equatorial region, one most delights in the characteristic and ever-present palm,—arboreal king of the forest. Ceylon has seven very important varieties native to its soil, which are found in great abundance especially upon the southern coast of the island. These are the cocoanut, the palmyra, the kittool, the areca, the date, the talipot, and the fan palm. The latter member of this family, seen in greatest perfection at Singapore, is a conspicuous ornament which greets the stranger immediately upon landing, and its peculiar shape is almost constantly to be met with, go where one may upon that interesting island. It springs up from the earth with a comparatively short stem before the branches begin, unlike most other palms, presenting an appearance of an expanded fan, as though it were artificially trained to grow in this particular shape. It reaches a height of forty feet or more, and forms a distinctive feature of the scenery. Its roots, like those of the asparagus plant, are small and innumerable, seeking sustenance by means of these tentacles which expand irregularly in all directions.

The fan palm is to be seen in California, but it is of inferior growth, and is not indigenous there. At the north of Ceylon, the palmyra palm prevails, while the south and southwest coast are literally lined with large and thrifty groves of cocoanut palms, the value of whose products is immense. The care and rendering of these gives employment and support to whole villages of natives. Unlike the date, the cocoanut palm bears male and female buds on the same branches. The last-named tree thrives best, and bears most fruit, when growing near the salt water, a peculiarity which does not apply specially to other members of this family.

It is a fact worthy of mention that the cocoanut palm, like the camel, is always found associated with man. There are no wild camels, and the cocoanut-tree does not flourish in the wilderness. It is most at home when its tall, smooth gray stem inclines gracefully, heavy with fruit, over some native, rudely thatched cabin, a picture which is constantly repeating itself in the southern part of Ceylon.

On first approaching the island, it is seen that the shore is palm-fringed from Dondra Head to Colombo, and even far north of the latter place. The picturesque cocoanut groves come down close to the sea, from which they are separated only by a golden belt of yellow sand, over which the trees incline gracefully, with their broad, plume-like foliage half hiding the ripening clusters of russet-clad fruit hanging fifty or sixty feet skyward. The salt spray of the Indian Ocean impregnates the atmosphere when the monsoons blow, stimulating the palms to unwonted vigor and fruitfulness. So uniform is their growth along the level shore that the tall white trunks with their feathery crowns seem to stand in closed ranks like a line of soldiers at "parade rest."

The reason of the extensive geographical distribution of the cocoanut palm is doubtless from its growing in such close proximity to the sea. The ripe nut falls upon the shore and is floated by tide and wind to other islands and coral reefs, where in due course it propagates itself and in turn begets other seeds which seek new lands in a similar manner and there plant themselves. The small islets of the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific have thus become heavily wooded from chance beginnings, though it has required many ages to bring about the present conditions.

The cocoanut palm is to the natives of Ceylon what the date palm is to the Arabs of the desert. Its regular cultivation is one of the recognized industries. The nuts designed for planting are selected from the best which are produced, and are kept upon the tree until they are thoroughly ripe, when they are placed in a nursery, partially covered with earth, and exposed to the sun. There they remain until a sprout shoots up from the eye of the nut, and when this reaches the height of nearly three feet, it also shows long, irregular roots hanging from the base. It is then planted in the ground at a depth of about two feet. The young tree grows very slowly for six or seven years, increasing more in stoutness than in height. Presently it starts afresh to grow tall quite rapidly, and by the eighth or ninth year it begins to bear fruit. Though the cultivation of this tree is so important, and ultimately so profitable, in equatorial regions that one would not think of its being neglected, still, owing to the length of time required to bring it to the fruit-bearing condition, the ever lazy natives do not expend much effort in the business. The long period between the seed and the product discourages them. Nature, however, steps in and fills the gap by the chance planting of many trees annually, and when these reach a certain growth suitable for removal, they are transplanted into advantageous situations. The new palms which are thus added yearly much more than keep good their numbers, as they are hardy and long-lived trees.

Thus it is that Nature is over-generous, and makes liberal provisions for her children in all instances. The camel has a foot especially designed for traveling upon the desert sands. Birds of prey possess talons suitable for seizing, and powerful beaks formed for severing their natural food. The tiniest plant shows exquisite adaptation to the climate where it is placed. Animals of the Arctic regions are covered with fur adequate to protect them from the freezing temperature in which they live. The most barbarous tribes are not forgotten. Wherever we find them, their food and necessities are sure to be discovered close at hand. Examples might be multiplied by the hundred. Ceylon alone offers us confirmation which is irrefutable, few spots on earth being better adapted to supply the natural wants of primitive man.

A thoughtful person cannot fail to be impressed with the remarkable adaptation of the palm family to the requirements of the natives of this region. Take, for instance, the cocoanut-tree, and realize for a moment its bountiful, beneficent products. It affords never-failing water in an always thirsty clime. Nutritious and palatable cream is obtained from its luscious nut; toddy to refresh the weary traveler, or arrack when fermented, comes from the same source, besides a rich oil for various domestic uses. Thus we have five distinct products from the cocoanut-tree, while the wood of the trunk itself affords material for many uses. The oriental poet designates three hundred different purposes to which the palm and its fruit can be profitably applied. The green nut contains nearly a pint of cool, sweet water; cool in the hottest weather, if partaken of when it is first gathered from the tree. The inner rind of the ripe nut, when reduced to a pulp, yields under pressure a cup of delicious cream. The toddy is sap produced from the buds thus divested, instead of permitting them to ripen and form the final nut. When it is first drawn, this liquid is pleasant and refreshing, like the newly expressed juice of the grape, or still more like Mexican pulque, produced by the American aloe, which is the universal tipple of the people south of the Rio Grande. By fermentation of the liquids obtained from the buds of the palm and from the stout stalk of the aloe, it becomes like alcohol, and is decidedly intoxicating. Cocoanut oil, produced from the fully ripe and dried meat of the nut, is a great staple of export from Colombo and Point de Galle. Each cocoanut-tree produces on an average from fifty to a hundred full and perfect nuts, yielding about a score the first year of its coming into bearing.

The cocoanut palm is the most common and most valuable of this family of trees, and next to it is the areca. The top of the former always bends gracefully towards the earth, affording the Eastern poets a synonym for humility, while the stem of the latter is quite remarkable for its perfectly upright form. Undoubtedly the cocoa palm does thrive best where it gets the influence of the sea breezes tinctured with the salt of the ocean, but it is a mistake to suppose that this tree does not thrive inland in Ceylon. Some of the finest specimens to be met with are in the central province of the island, between Kandy and Trincomalee.

The talipot palm is very marked in its nature, and is specially interesting to naturalists; fine specimens are to be seen all over the island. Its most remarkable peculiarity is that it flourishes about forty or fifty years without flowering; then it seems to arrive at maturity, blooms in regal style, yields its abundant seed, and dies,—the only vegetable growth known which passes through such a uniformly prolonged process of ripening and decay, not forgetting the misnamed century plant. The flower of the talipot is a tall, pyramidal spike of pale yellow blossoms, standing twenty feet above its heavy dark-green foliage like a huge military pompon. It is pronounced by botanists to be the noblest and largest flower in the world, and this is certainly so if we consider the whole clustering bloom as being one flower. The leaves of the tree when full-grown are large and of a deep green, but when young they are a pale yellow, and are then dried and used for writing upon. Leaves of the talipot have been measured in Ceylon which have attained the length of twenty feet, and they are used by the natives for the erection of tents. The author has seen in Brazil leaves of what is known as the inaja palm fifty feet long and ten or twelve wide.

The young leaves of the palmyra palm are also employed for manuscripts, or rather were until lately. They are prepared by steeping them in hot water or milk, after which they are dried and pressed between pieces of smooth wood. The ancient Mexicans before Pizarro's time used the leaves of the aloe for a similar purpose. The talipot palm is the queen of its tribe.

The betelnut is the product of the areca palm, and resembles a nutmeg in shape and size. A couple of hundred generally form the annual yield of a single tree. Like the cocoanut or our American chestnut, the fruit grows inside of a husk, russet colored, and fibrous in its nature. Farther to the eastward, among the Straits Settlements, the areca palm is known as the Penang-tree because of its predominance in that well-wooded island, where human life exhibits only its most sensuous and lowest form, and where vegetation, fruits, and flowers revel in exuberance.

The banian-tree with its aerial roots is indigenous to Ceylon, flourishing after its peculiar fashion in all parts of the island. At a point on the coast about half-way between Colombo and Galle, there is a grand specimen of this self-producing arboreal giant. The road passes directly through its extensive grove, beneath its dense and welcome shade, which here forms a sort of triumphal arch. The author has seen but one other example of the banian-tree so large and fine in effect; namely, that of world-wide fame in the Botanical Garden just outside of Calcutta, under the thick foliage and branches of which a whole regiment of infantry might comfortably encamp. The age of the banian is incalculable. It multiplies itself so that it may be said in one sense to live forever. Many centuries of age are claimed for this tree in the south of Ceylon.

Speaking of the road between Colombo and Galle, too much praise cannot be bestowed upon these government thoroughfares. Whether on long or short routes, they are admirably and substantially constructed, consequently they are easy to keep in good order. The island has over three thousand miles of made roadways in an area of twenty-five thousand square miles. "The first and most potent means of extending civilization," says a modern pioneer, "is found in roads, the second in roads, the third again in roads." The best thoroughfares in the neighborhood of our New England cities are hardly equal to these. The Ceylon public roads would delight Colonel Pope, of bicycle fame; he who so eloquently and none too earnestly advocates the great importance of good common roads, especially in New England, where we are, when the truth is fairly spoken, sadly deficient in them. The new States of the West and Southwest far excel us in this respect. The road on which we have just embarked, aside from its excellence in point of usefulness (the railway from Colombo to Galle was not completed when the author traveled over the route), is one of ideal beauty, passing through a forest and shore region combined. This turnpike abounds in unique effects and a succession of charming surprises. One is never quite prepared for the natural tableaux which constantly present themselves. An experienced traveler in the low latitudes is apt to anticipate the probabilities when starting forth on a new tropical route, but one must behold in order to properly understand the nature of Ceylon forest scenery. The Colombo and Galle road forms an almost continuous avenue through overarching cocoanut palms, with frequent glimpses of the Indian Ocean on one side and of fresh-water ponds and small lakes on the other, the latter all alive with aquatic birds, such as water-pheasants, plovers, teal, sandlarks, and the like. The "painted snipe," as it is called, is very common, having a chocolate-colored head and a white collar, with back and wings of green, the tail feathers being spotted with yellow like a butterfly's wings. It is a very active bird and is never quiet for a single moment, constantly teetering when upon its feet while seeking for red worms in the sand. A very similar bird is often seen on the salt-water beaches of New England, which resembles this Ceylon example in shape, size, and habits, but not in the texture of its feathers. The American bird also called snipe is of a uniform pale lavender color. It is shy enough on our coast, but its tropical brother is as tame as a pigeon. These places are teeming with blossoms,—pink lilies, bearing broad, floating, heart-shaped leaves whose roots are securely anchored to the bottom. Some of the plants resting so serenely on the glass-like surface have short, delicate white roots, and receive their nutriment only from the air and water, not coming in contact with the earth at all. Others, with insect-inviting petals, close promptly upon the victims allured to their embrace and digest them at leisure, thriving marvelously upon this animal nourishment. Any agency which tends to diminish the myriads of flies and mosquitoes is an assured blessing.

When a native hut is seen, it is found scarcely to equal the ant-hills in neatness and solidity of construction. Close by the cabin the always interesting bread-fruit-tree rears its tall head, abounding in its large pale green product, which forms a never-failing natural food supply. It is a notable member of the fruit-bearing trees of these latitudes, and is next in importance to the cocoa palm, with its serrated, feathery leaves, and its melon-shaped product. The bread-fruit weighs on an average ten pounds each, and often attains double that weight. It is as fattening to cattle as the best Indian meal, and the natives relish it, but to a European the bread-fruit is not palatable. The tree grows about fifty feet in height, and requires but very little attention to insure its welfare. Plenty of bananas, the big jack fruit, mangoes, and plantains give altogether the appearance of an abundance for the support of life. As regards the valuable and, to the native, indispensable jack-tree, it is strongly individualized, not only because it yields the largest of all edible fruit, but also in the fact that the massive product grows out of the body of the tree, and not, after the fashion of other fruits, upon the small limbs and branches. Nature has made a special provision in behalf of this tree. As it grows older and the fruit increases in size, it is produced lower and lower on the trunk each year, until from being grown near the top, it springs out close to the ground. Though the short, rope-like stalk which holds the rough, green-coated fruit is of strong fiber, still, when in ripe condition, it is apt to fall to the earth. As the product increases in size, it would be broken to pieces if it fell from any considerable height. The natives apply themselves to its consumption with unlimited capacities. The wood of the jack is much used for lumber, being easily worked, and presenting a good surface even for common house furniture as well as for lighter bungalow framework. Supporting timbers, however, must be made from harder wood, so as to resist the inroads of the vicious ants. The humble native tenement has a frame made from the tough, golden-stemmed bamboo, which is to a casual observer apparently very frail, but is nevertheless found to be extremely flexible, tenacious, and lasting. Where the bamboo branches intersect each other, they are securely bound together with thongs made from palm-tree fibre; this is to secure them in position.

For a long time the luscious mangosteen was thought to be peculiar to the islands of the Malacca Straits, but it is now found thriving in this garden-land of Ceylon, having been long since introduced from Penang. Attempts to domesticate it in southern India have proved unsuccessful. The same may be said of the fragrant nutmeg, which has become an article of profitable export from the island, though it is not indigenous here. Along this turnpike road we occasionally pass small cinnamon plantations, where the process of cutting and peeling the bark is going on, considerable quantities being exposed and spread out in the sun, whose intense heat dries it most rapidly. When labor of any sort is in progress, even in the wet rice-fields, it will be seen that the women perform the hardest tasks. In fact, this is to be observed in town and country, both in domestic affairs and in the open field, especially in the transportation of heavy burdens, which they carry on their heads.

Making beasts of burden of women is not alone practiced in Ceylon. It is also shamefully obvious in many European centres, where civilization is supposed to have reached its acme. Americans who have traveled in Germany, for instance, have often experienced disgust at the debasing services required of the sex in that country. The author has seen women, in Munich, carrying hods of bricks and mortar up long ladders, where new buildings were being constructed, while hard by their lords and masters were drinking huge "schooners" of lager beer in taprooms, and lazily smoking foul tobacco.

Loitering beneath the shade of the trees contiguous to their cabins, queer family groups of Singhalese natives watch the passing stranger with curious, questioning eyes. Clothes are of little consideration in a climate like this, and consequently nudity is the rule. The preparation of food is intrusted mainly to Nature, whose bountiful hand hangs ripe and tempting nourishment ever ready upon the trees, where all are free to pluck and to eat. It is curious to see how easily a native man or boy, with a rope of vegetable fibre passed round his thighs and thence about the trunk of a palm, will, with feet and hands thus supplemented, ascend a cocoanut-tree eighty feet or more, to reach the ripe fruit. He moves upwards as rapidly as one might go up a tall ladder. It is true, the rope sometimes fails, a broken neck follows, and a fresh grave is required to decently inter the remains. This is said to be one of the most "fruitful" causes of fatal accidents in Ceylon. This sort of catastrophe, and poisonous cobra bites, are almost as frequent and deadly in the island as electric car accidents are in Boston or New York.

As one regards these lazy, betel-chewing, irresponsible children of the tropics, idling in the shade of the palms, it does not seem strange that they should lead a sensuous life, the chief occupations of which are eating and sleeping. All humanity here appears to be more or less torpid. There is no necessity to arouse man to action,—effort is superfluous. The very bounty of Nature makes the recipients lazy, dirty, and heedless. They live from hand to mouth, exercising no forecast, making no provision for the morrow. It is the paradise of birds, butterflies, and flowers, but man seems to be out of place; he adds nothing to the beauty of the surroundings; he does nothing to improve such wealth of possibilities as Providence spreads broadcast only in equatorial regions. Bishop Heber's lines alluding to Ceylon were certainly both pertinent and true: "Where only man is vile."

We were just now speaking of native family groups observed on the route between Galle and Colombo, which is a thoroughly typical region, and may well serve as a truthful picture of such scenes all over the southern district of Ceylon. They would form admirable subjects for photographic delineation,—a gratuitous suggestion for the modern Kodak enthusiast.

The children of eight or nine years, who form a portion of these groups, are as naked as when they were born, while their parents are as scantily clad as decency will permit. The boys and girls have large, brilliant, and intensely black eyes, with a strong promise of a good degree of intelligence, but their possibilities are doomed to remain unfulfilled amid such associations as they are born to. A few more years and they will subside into languid, sensuous beings, like their progenitors. They do but obey their polarity,—the "cherubim" of destiny ought to be designated by a harsher name. The men wear a white cotton cloth wound about their loins. The women have a similar covering, sometimes adding a short, cotton, jacket-like waist. The children have monstrously protruding stomachs, like the little darkies of our Southern States, but yet as a rule they seem to be well and hearty. The women of the Tamil race, especially, are of good form and features, much handsomer than the Singhalese of the same sex. It is a notable fact in this connection that there are fewer women in Ceylon than men, a circumstance which has furnished a weak argument for some native writers in favor of polyandry, which is still sanctioned in the central districts. In the island of Malta, this relative position of the sexes is entirely reversed.

The Tamil men are of good height, slim, with small limbs yet well formed, and have pleasing features and bronzed skins, very similar in hue to our North American Indians. The Singhalese are of a darker complexion, not so light in figure; they affect European dress, adding much ornamentation. They hold themselves of a superior class to the Tamils, engaging only in what they consider a higher line of occupation. The Tamils form the humbler and laboring population of the country. They fully recognize the distinction between themselves and the Singhalese proper, and they are universally called coolies. Caste is never disregarded among them, its infinite ramifications extending through all degrees and classes of the people, regulated by universally accepted ideas. This peculiar system was early introduced into the country from India, but was previously unknown here. It is difficult for the uninitiated to understand its real import. There are twenty or more castes rigidly adhered to, which may be rendered in numerical order of importance as follows: The husbandman's occupation comes first in dignity, followed by that of the fisherman; goldsmiths rank as third, blacksmiths as fourth caste, and so on in the following order: braziers, cinnamon peelers, washermen, barbers, potters, tom-tom-beaters in the temples, etc. Domestic intercourse between persons of different castes is inadmissible, and to marry below one's caste is considered to be disgraceful. Feelings of intolerable pride on the one hand and of abject humiliation on the other are thus created and perpetuated. In each caste the children must follow the occupation of the father; a carpenter's boys must be carpenters, and his daughters must marry carpenters. Caste is therefore absolute death to all promptings of ambition, according to native ideas. No one can hope to rise above the grade in which he is born, and no one makes the attempt. Nearly a century of English control has only served to confirm these Asiatics in the thralldom of caste. How could it be otherwise when the ruling power is itself a slave to the same idea? Sir Matthew Arnold says: "Aristocracy now sets up in our country a false ideal, which materializes our upper class, vulgarizes our middle class, and brutalizes our lower class."

Both men and women among the natives in town and country are often tattooed on their arms, legs, and bodies, while a few, but this is rare, are decorated on their faces. A child less than ten years of age was seen in the Pettah at Colombo, whose body was absolutely covered with crude designs fixed indelibly by this process. One could not but imagine how the little fellow must have been made to suffer during the worse than useless operation, which is, even to a hardened adult, little short of slow agony. This instance struck the author as being the more remarkable because the Singhalese and almost all savage or semi-civilized races are found to be remarkably kind to their offspring, even as wild animals are. We are compelled in some degree to qualify this assertion, since the missionaries tell us that in certain parts of the island female infants are often destroyed at the time of birth. If this is the case to any considerable extent, it would account for the statistical fact that the men largely outnumber the women in Ceylon. It is difficult to believe, however, that this practice prevails in our day. With some barbaric tribes, religious significance is attached to the habit of tattooing the human body. This is the case in New Zealand, and in the islands generally of the South Pacific. Among the former, professional tattooers go about from tribe to tribe with rude but effective instruments, and operate upon the Maoris, male and female, with great adroitness and considerable artistic skill.

There is perhaps no other such universal practice as that of tattooing which prevails among semi-savage races in various parts of the globe, but especially among the South Sea Islanders. Many tribes, never brought in contact with each other, seem to have originated the idea among themselves.

CHAPTER VII.

Experiences between Colombo and Point de Galle.—Dangers of Encountering Reptiles.—Marvelous Ant Houses.—Insect Architects.—Curious Bird's Nests.—Flamingoes at Rest.—Variety of the Crane Family.—Wild Pea-Fowls.—Buddha's Prohibition.—Peculiar Wood-Notes.—Mingling of Fruit and Timber Trees.—Fatal Parasitic Vines.—Stillness of the Forest.—Superstitions of the Natives.—Snake Bites.—Railway Facilities.

Amid all the charms of this interesting, palm-embowered route between Colombo and Galle, there are some serious drawbacks to be encountered, which as a faithful chronicler the author must not forget to mention. All mundane enjoyments are qualified. One meets inevitably with an aggressive army of beetles, ants, land leeches, dragon-flies, cock-chafers, locusts, wasps, ticks, and vicious spiders, these last endowed with an immense superfluity of hairy legs, while the omnipresent and persistent mosquito exhibits unwonted activity. Indeed, ants, mosquitoes, and sand-flies literally feast upon the wayfarer, until the entire surface of his face and limbs becomes excoriated. How the natives with their exposed bodies exist under such circumstances is a mystery. The redundancy of insect and reptile life is wonderful in equatorial regions, but as regards the mosquito, where is this pest not encountered? The author has met and suffered from them at the far north on the very glaciers of Alaska during the short summer months, and in the extreme south near the Antarctic Circle, in the East and in the West, on sea and on land. Of course they are perennial here like the foliage, and viciously tormenting.

We often heard stories of fatal bites from scorpions, centipedes, cobras, and other reptiles, but our own experience goes to show that they are naturally inclined to avoid human beings. It is true that repulsive insects and reptiles are to be looked out for. One is careful to examine his shoes before putting them on in the morning, and to take a few precautions of that sort. Cleanly houses do not harbor them, though they do sometimes annoy the traveler in the public rest-houses where he is often compelled to pass the night.

In the thickly wooded districts, the ants' nests are pyramidal in form, and five feet high, being constructed with even more uniformity than human hands could produce. Inside, they are divided into broad passageways, square halls, and store-rooms, to produce which divisions, so as to make them both accessible and convenient for the purpose designed, requires mental calculation, the possession of which we hardly accord to insects. Mere instinct could not insure such results as are here exhibited. Ants, like bees, live in thoroughly organized communities, and are found by naturalists to be divided into laborers, soldiers, and food providers, all presided over by a recognized chief in authority. On a warm, dry morning, any attentive observer may see the white ants in the neighborhood of their hills bringing out their eggs to warm them in the direct rays of the sun. In proper time, before the dew falls, they are carefully returned to their original place of deposit. The natives understand that there will be no rain when the instinct—or reason if you will—of these minute creatures leads them to expose their eggs to the influence of the sun's rays. As barometers, these little insects surpass the most accurate instrument which human intelligence can construct.

The interminable feuds and furious wars of the ant tribe are a curious study in the tropics, where they would be an intolerable pest were their numbers not daily reduced by various destructive agencies. It is a provision of nature among animals and insects that a war of extermination is constantly in progress among them. The stouter animal preys upon the weaker. Birds, beasts, insects, and fishes, all are cannibals in one sense. Just so among the barbaric tribes of Africa, New Zealand, the Fiji Islands, Australia, etc.: the natives, since time was young until very lately, have made war upon each other when their food supply ran low, in order to secure prisoners, whom they roasted and ate.

In these thick woods along the coast, curious nests of unfamiliar birds also catch the eye, securely fixed among the pendulous orchids and creeping ferns. All is so new to a northerner that he is on the watch for every typical object which may present itself. He does not fail to mark the nest of the tailor-bird, the little creature which ingeniously sews leaves together to suit its purpose, and that of the weaver-bird with its tunnel-like entrance; both are common in the district which we are describing. The nest of the grosbeak is remarkable, being two feet long, and composed of finely woven grass as strong as the texture of common straw hats. It is shaped like an elongated pear, and suspended at the extreme end of a branch, swinging back and forth in the wind. The entrance is at the bottom, so as to render the nest secure against the attacks of snakes, monkeys, and other enemies. Sometimes a score of these nests are seen in the same tree. There is also a species of wasp whose architectural proclivities are displayed in the building of stout, pendant nests five feet in length. Low down among the undergrowth, say five feet from the earth, there are colonies of spiders, whose webs are nearly as strong as pack-thread, absolutely barring the way in some places among the dense wood. Coming upon an open glade, a wild peacock is seen. He exhibits no fear of our presence, but flaunts his feathery splendors with all the self-sufficiency of conscious beauty. Farther on, we see pretty specimens of the bird of paradise. Now the land becomes low and marshy, and a broad lake glistens in the sun. Here are plenty of water-rail, blue kingfishes, and metallic dragon-flies, the latter skimming over the still water, daintily touching the surface now and again. Hereabouts the woods and open glades are crowded with bird life. Storks, cranes, ibises, herons, pelicans, and flamingoes abound in the low, wet grounds, marshaling themselves in long files, like trained bodies of men, along the shore of the fresh-water ponds. The flamingo is called the English soldier-bird by the natives because of its habits, and its pink epaulets, which tip the body joints of its otherwise snow-white wings.

The effect is indeed ludicrous when a dozen or more flamingoes, each standing quietly upon one leg, with its head folded beneath its wing, seem to be sleeping in that manner. A wide-awake sentinel is always posted in a commanding position to give warning should an enemy approach. If the cautionary signal is given, all rise in the air together, and flying low, trail their long, stilt-like legs stretched far behind them. The legs of the wading species of birds are not graceful appendages. Most of the feathered tribe have a decorous way of gathering their limbs up close to their bodies when they launch upon the wing. This would, however, be obviously impossible in the long-legged tribe to which we have referred. The varieties of the crane family are almost numberless, from the largest, which stands five feet in height, down to others not taller than a duck. The water-pheasant, white as the paper upon which we are writing, is a little beauty about the size of a dove, and may often be seen standing upon the broad lotus leaves pecking at the seeds. Do they, too, like human lotus-eaters, seek oblivion and exaltation through the subtle narcotic thus imbibed?

Now and again we come upon a bevy of pea-fowls quietly feeding among the ferns, plump and beautiful creatures, mottled with white spots upon a glossy, slate-colored ground, and nearly as large as our average domestic fowls. In some parts of Ceylon, they are found in very large numbers, and as the natives do not disturb them, they are comparatively tame. We had our suspicions that an occasional Singhalese stretched his conscience sufficiently to kill and devour a pea-hen. Though according to his religious faith the Buddhist may not himself sacrifice life, he may eat what has been killed by one of another creed. "From the meanest insect up to man, thou shalt not kill," says the first commandment of Buddha. It must be admitted that the injunction is very closely heeded. The fact is, the natives do not crave meat in this hot climate, and it is easy to see that with an abundance of excellent fruit and vegetables, supplemented by an occasional meal of fresh or salted fish, the diet of the common people is wholesome and sufficient. As repeatedly shown, religious instinct protects animal life among the Buddhists, but why an exception is made in regard to fish, it is impossible to explain. We have met rigid Buddhists, however, who would not eat fish,—conscientious men, to whom the life in the sea was equally sacred with that found upon the land.

As regards the meat brought from the forest and jungle by European hunters, the average native has no compunction in eating of it, and is the grateful recipient of boar or bear carcass for food purposes, as he has not himself infringed upon the sacred injunction not to take the life of any creature.

As we wend our way among the thick vegetation and shadowy trees, the wood-pigeon's soothing, droning notes fall upon the ear like the melody of a human mother lulling her infant babe to sleep. Now and again the jungle-cock shouts his defiant reveille in a startling fashion, breaking the almost solemn silence. The unpleasant squeak of the flying-frog occasionally grates upon the senses, a creature so called on account of its remarkable ability of springing from one tree to another. It is of a rich, light green color, and very poisonous. The author had never heard of this creature until it introduced itself by means of the unpleasant croaking sound which it sends forth, very similar to that produced by the action of a rusty door-hinge.

While noting these things, it was for the first time learned that the peacock is a most destructive enemy of the snake tribe, to which reptiles he has an inveterate antipathy,—why or wherefore, no one knows. He pecks out the snake's eyes, in spite of his fangs. The favorite food of this gorgeous bird is said to be the white ant, which so abounds here; a happy provision, whereby the multiplying of this insect pest is in a measure checked. One is prone to query what the white ant was created for. Perhaps it was to eradicate some mightier and unknown curse. Quien sabe?

The white ants are the most extraordinary creatures of the formican tribe. Their dwellings are more than a thousand times higher than themselves; were human beings to construct their edifices upon the same relative scale, we should live in houses six thousand feet in height. These ants are like small white slugs in appearance, and are said to be delicious eating. Certain low castes in Ceylon use them as articles of food. A veracious modern writer describes them as tasting like sugared cream and white almonds. One could get accustomed to these things, no doubt, but gnawing hunger would have to be the accompanying sauce to tempt most Europeans to even taste this peculiar dish of the tropics. Are not snails sold in Paris and London as a table luxury? Much travel has cured the author of fastidiousness in regard to food, but he draws the line at snails, ants, and caterpillars.

There are many peculiarities which strike one in a tropical forest, affording strong contrasts to ours of the north, not only in the nature of the products, but also in the seemingly incongruous mingling of various species of trees. We have pine forests, oak forests, cedar, birch, and maple woods; but in the low latitudes, fruit and timber trees abide together in utmost harmony. It would be a singular sight in New England if we were to find peach or apple trees bearing after their kind among a forest of oaks, or cherry and plum trees producing their fruit in a pine grove. In a Ceylon jungle, the banian and the palm, the bread-fruit, banana, satinwood, calamander, mango, and bamboo, tamarind, and ebony, mingle familiarly together. This is a peculiarity born of the wonderful vegetable productiveness of the equatorial regions, which seem to give indiscriminative birth to fruits and flowers, wherever there is sufficient space to nourish their roots and to expand the branches.

Each one of these tall forest trees, so various in species and so thrifty in growth, serves to sustain some other vegetable life, mostly in the form of creeping, clinging plants. Scarcely one is seen in the jungle without its dependent of this nature, and many of them are rendered extremely lovely by rich festoons of blossoms, which they bear in profusion, reminding one of the clusters of blue and purple wistarias so common in our country. A forest tree wreathed with golden allamandas, when seen for the first time, is a new and never-to-be-forgotten revelation of beauty, forming a towering mass of bloom. Nature is a charming decorator. Her sweet combinations never outrage the most delicate, æsthetic taste; art may imitate, but it cannot rival her. Orchids, ferns, and the most exquisite mosses in myriads of shades abound, all struggling for space to expand their gorgeous beauty, while blossoms of scarlet, lilac, and purest white festoon the tallest stems. The loftiest forest trees are rarely without examples of these often lovely parasites, adhering to and drawing life from their abundant vitality. About some of the largest trees, plain, stout vines, with rich leaves but bearing no flowers, are also seen entwined from base to top, binding the trunk upon which they cling like a huge piece of cordage or a ship's hawser. These vines, as they grow from year to year, tighten their clasp upon the trunk of the tree, slowly but surely choking it, until the circulation is stopped, so that it finally gives up the struggle for existence, withers, and dies. In the mean time, the fatal vine gradually takes the place of the original tree, fattening upon its decay, itself, after the lapse of years, to be displaced in a similar manner. It is an inevitable rule that the parasite shall finally end by throttling its adversary, or rather we should say its victim, like the Indian Thug, who embraces only to kill. Thus the process of death and renewal in the vegetable kingdom goes on through the centuries in these lonely, undisturbed wilds.

The wonderful stillness which reigns in some portions of the dense forests of Ceylon is such that one can hear the tick of the watch which he carries,—a silence which presently becomes almost oppressive, putting one on the very tiptoe of expectation as to what startling outbreak may possibly happen. When a gentle breeze sweeps past, the agitated leaves whisper to each other, while one strives to understand what they say in their arboreal tongue. If, by chance, the uncanny screech of the devil-bird is heard under such circumstances, your native guides will quickly hide their eyes in their hands, for, according to their credulous theories and superstitions, they believe if they see a devil-bird it is the forerunner of all manner of misfortunes, among other catastrophes signifying sure death to themselves within a twelve-month. This feathered pariah is an owl-like creature, and seldom puts in an appearance in the daytime. The natives have a proverb expressing the idea that to meet with a white crow or a straight cocoanut palm is equally unfortunate, but the fact is, neither is ever seen. Many of the local axioms, and there are myriads of them, are of a similar character, pronouncing a penalty as sure to follow upon a supposed, but really impossible, occurrence.

The growth of parasitic vines, to which we have referred, is not by any means confined to Ceylon. It is observable to a certain extent on the St. John's River, in Florida, and the neighboring wooded districts. The author has seen similar instances in the forests of the King's Country, as it is called, in New Zealand, where the native tribes maintain a quasi independence, though they are really subject to England. Here the development of the destructive vines is very pronounced and curious. After ascending a tree by means of an anaconda-like embrace, the vine continues to stretch out its length so as to clasp the branches of the next nearest tree, descending its trunk by the entwining process to the base. Thence it proceeds to climb the next nearest stem, and so on, until the woods are rendered impassable by this insidious, swift-growing vegetable cordage, forming, with the undergrowth, a jungle only penetrable by wild animals.

It is in such jungles in Ceylon that poisonous reptiles do much abound, especially where the land is of a marshy nature, and these places are always avoided, even by the Singhalese themselves. Local statistics show that a hundred and fifty natives, on an average, lose their lives annually by snake-bites. Few white people are thus sacrificed, they being naturally less exposed. The native, inland, has no covering for his feet and legs, while the Europeans are always protected in these parts of the body, so that if attacked, the poisonous fangs of the serpent rarely penetrate the skin. The bite of a cobra is said to be harmless if given through woolen clothing, as the texture absorbs the virus, besides which the fangs of the reptile under such circumstances are not liable to penetrate the skin of a white person.

In connection with this typical route between Colombo and Galle, we have spoken of the railway, which has for some time been gradually stretching from the capital southward. Probably before these pages reach the public eye, this long-needed road will be in running order between the two cities, passing through Mount Lavonia,—the comparatively cool and pleasant summer resort,—Morotto, Panadura, Kalatura, Bentola,—famous for its oysters and as being the half-way station,—and so on, through the several shore settlements to Galle. This will doubtless prove as profitable a road as that between Colombo and Kandy, which paid its entire first cost out of the profits in a few years after its completion, besides making good its full interest account. It should be added that there was no "watering" of the stock after our American style, a shamefully deceptive and dishonest system, which has made so many millionaires richer, and the average citizen poorer, in our own country.

The study of tropical flora and fauna is intensely interesting to a lover of nature. Let us not, however, presume too far upon the reader's patience, but hasten to tell him of Colombo, the capital of this Indian isle, together with its people and its attractive surroundings.

CHAPTER VIII.

Colombo, Capital of Ceylon.—Harbor Facilities.—The Breakwater.—Exposed to Epidemics.—Experiences on Landing.—Hump-Backed Cattle.—Grand Oriental Hotel.—Singhalese Waiters.—Galle Face Hotel.—An Unusual Scene.—Number of Inhabitants.—Black Town the Native Quarters.—Domestic Scenes.—Monkeys.-Evil Odors.—Humble Homes.—The Banana-Tree.—Native Temples and Priestly Customs.—Vegetables and Fruits.—Woman's Instinct.—Street Scenes in the Pettah.—Fish Market.

Point de Galle, situated seventy miles nearer to its southern extremity, was the principal port of Ceylon from time immemorial, until the English government turned the open roadstead of Colombo into an excellent and safe artificial harbor, by erecting an extensive breakwater. It is one of the most successful conceptions of the sort ever consummated in the East, and was begun in 1875,—the Prince of Wales laying the corner-stone,—and completed in 1884. This was an improvement which had long been imperatively demanded, but which had been deferred for years on account of the serious impediments which presented themselves and the heavy expenditure which it involved. Previous to the construction of the breakwater, at certain seasons of the year it was nearly impossible to effect a landing at Colombo, owing to the boisterousness of the sea on this part of the coast during the prevalence of the southwest monsoons. The surf-beaten shore of the Coromandel coast at the north is scarcely more exposed than was the open roadstead of this port. In the shipment or discharge of freight, it constantly ran the risk of being ruined by salt water, the service being necessarily performed by means of scows or lighters. The well-built breakwater has nearly remedied this trouble. It is about a mile in length, constructed of solid blocks of concrete, averaging twenty-five tons each, and rises upon a firm foundation to a uniform height of fifteen feet above low-water mark. The outermost end is capped by a lighthouse, and is curved inward almost at right angles with the main line of the work, thus forming a shelter for the anchorage of shipping. It is now proposed to place a similar structure on the opposite or north side of the bay, leaving a suitable entrance to the harbor. This would render the anchorage quite smooth in all weather, and as safe for shipping as the Liverpool docks. When the southwest monsoon is in full force, the water breaks over the present line to a height of forty feet, falling in harmless spray on the inner side. The thorough and substantial character of the construction may be judged of by its actual cost, which was between three and four million dollars. The entire work was performed by convict labor. The area sheltered from the southwest monsoons is over five hundred acres, half of which has depths varying from twenty-six to forty feet at low tide. The breakwater forms an excellent promenade except in rough weather, and is much improved for that purpose by the people who reside in the neighborhood. Having good anchorage space, sufficient depth of water, and a sheltered harbor, Colombo is now the regular port of call for the great steamship lines sailing to and from China, Japan, the Straits Settlements, Australia, and Calcutta, and is justly entitled to the name of the commercial as well as the political capital of Ceylon. In the long past, it has shared the former honor with Point de Galle.

There is no tropical island, or indeed any part of the Orient, which has a more prompt and frequent mail service than has Colombo, a highly important consideration with people who, aside from business connections, desire to keep in touch with the world and the times.

Like Malta, the island is so situated between the East and the West as to be exposed to any epidemic which may prevail in either quarter, and which is easily brought by vessels touching here for coal or freight. The author heard nothing of quarantine provisions or regulations enforced at Colombo, but there is doubtless some official supervision of this character. All persons who have traveled extensively have encountered more or less annoyance from quarantine regulations, especially as enforced throughout the East, but all experience shows their necessity.

We landed at Colombo on Christmas day, our baggage—after a mere pretense of examination on the part of the custom-house officers—being promptly put into a two-wheeled, canvas-covered bullock cart, beside which we walked with open umbrella, for the direct rays of the equatorial sun were almost unbearable even at this season of the year. It was observed that the driver of the small, dun-colored yoke of cattle attached to the cart used no whip, and he was mentally commended for his humanity. This, however, was premature, for it soon appeared that he had an ingenious and cruel device whereby to urge his oxen forward. The fellow twisted their tails vigorously, which must have been intensely painful to them, as they showed by their actions. Not being able to speak Singhalese, the author promptly applied the same treatment to the driver's ears, an argument which required no interpreter, and which proved to be both convincing and effectual. It was afterward discovered that the tails of many of the oxen here were absolutely dislocated from this brutal process, used by the drivers to urge them forward. Though a Singhalese's religion forbids his taking the life of the meanest insect, it does not seem to prevent his torturing these really handsome and useful animals. There is one way in which these mild-eyed, hump-backed creatures occasionally assert themselves which is somewhat original, and commands our hearty approval. When they are overtasked and abused beyond endurance, they are liable to lie down in the middle of the roadway, and nothing will start them until they choose to get up and proceed of their own will. So the overladen camel lies down upon the desert sand, and will not rise until his burden is properly adjusted.

While wilting in the enervating atmosphere, as we pursued our way from the shore, the thought naturally suggested itself that just then, on the other side of the globe, our friends at home were probably sitting before cheerful soft-coal fires and quietly enjoying the genial heat and the enlivening blaze. It was also remembered that Colombo is acknowledged to be the hottest city in the Queen of England's dominions. The sun was far too bright and intense for unaccustomed northern eyes, and it was a great relief to reach the shelter beneath the broad piazza of the hotel, though it is but a short distance from the landing. We were waited upon at the Grand Oriental with an intelligent and discerning regard for a traveler's comfort, and assigned to large, cleanly apartments. The rooms were divided from each other only by partial partitions, which did not reach the ceilings, the upper portion being left open for the purpose of promoting ventilation. So intense is the heat in Colombo at times that this is quite necessary, though such an arrangement does not permit of the degree of privacy requisite for a sleeping apartment. The hottest months at this point are February, March, and April, when all who can do so escape to the hill district.

The Oriental is an excellent and spacious hotel, containing over one hundred sleeping-rooms, with ample retiring apartments on the first floor and a dining-room which will seat three hundred guests at a time. A line of arcades is connected with the house, beneath the shade of which one can go shopping at the little gem and curio stores. The hotel is built about a large central court or area, which is well filled with thrifty tropical vegetation. The whole is admirably arranged, and is well kept after American and European ideas. While the guests sit at meals in the large dining-hall, long lines of punkas or fans, suspended over the tables, are operated by servants placed outside of the room, thus rendering the atmosphere quite endurable, notwithstanding the intense heat which generally prevails. The waiters were found to be natives, but all spoke English, and were well trained in the performance of their duties. Each one of them wore a white turban, and a single white cotton garment cut like a gentleman's dressing-gown, and confined at the waist by a crimson sash. The legs and feet of these copper-colored servants were bare, after the conventional style of such persons throughout this island, as well as in India proper.

One other large house of public entertainment has a good reputation, and is certainly most favorably situated. It is known as the Galle Face Hotel, adjoining the popular esplanade of the same name. This house is well patronized, especially by officers of the army and navy. For a permanent residence it is perhaps preferable to the Oriental, on account of its charming maritime outlook. There are several other public houses, but of these two the author can speak approvingly from personal experience.

An unusual scene, which transpired on the esplanade near the Galle Face Hotel, occurs to us at this writing:—

One of the bullock gigs, so common in Colombo, stopped suddenly before that hostelry. The driver, who had jumped to the ground, was examining the animal with much surprise. In the mean time, the bullock was staggering like a drunken man, reeling hither and thither while striving to keep upon its feet, shaking its head strangely in a wild sort of way, and trembling all over. The thermometer was somewhere between 95° and 100° Fahr. A score of idle and curious natives thronged about the spot, entirely shutting out the circulation of what little fresh air there was stirring. At this moment a cavalryman from the barracks hard by made his way into the crowd, and seizing the bullock's nose he bade the driver hold him steadily by the horns. Taking a knife from his pocket, the new-comer forced the animal's mouth open and adroitly made a deep incision in one of the bars which form the roof, instantly causing the blood to flow freely therefrom. After the lapse of a very few minutes, the bullock recovered, standing once more quite firmly upon its feet, as soon as the pressure upon its brain was relieved by the flow of blood. The creature had experienced an attack of what in horses is called blind-staggers, produced by a rush of blood to the brain, undoubtedly occasioned in this instance by the great heat and by over-exertion. The cavalryman's readiness with his knife produced just the sort of relief which was required in such an exigency.

"The bullock could not have been driven very fast," said an English lady, who had regarded the scene intently from the piazza of the hotel, "because it does not perspire at all; see, its hide is perfectly dry."

"That sort of hanimal doesn't sweat only on the nose," said the cavalryman, as he coolly wiped his knife and returned it to his pocket, adding, "'Orses does, but hoxen doesn't."

It is a noticeable fact that European horses cannot endure the climate of Ceylon; some which are imported from Australia manage to give satisfaction for a limited period. The breeding of these animals is not a success in the island, and the natives do not use them at all.

Colombo has a hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, and is divided into what is known as The Fort and Black Town, the former being the portion devoted to the official quarters and the residences of the English, the latter mostly to the very humble homes of the natives. Black Town is quite oriental and very dirty, dispensing a most unmistakable odor like a faint tincture of musk. It stretches along the harbor front for more than a mile, until it ends at the Kalani River, and contains a most heterogeneous mingling of races, each individual decked in some distinctive garb of his original nationality, the majority, however, exhibiting only the bronzed skin covering to their bones which nature provides. Even these nude figures form an anomalous sight, often having their heads covered with monstrous, elaborate white turbans, and only a thin piece of cotton about their loins. The houses, or cabins as they would more properly be called, are of one story, dingy and poor, generally constructed of mud upon bamboo frames, with a thatched roof of dried palm leaves so braided together as to make a stout and secure protection from the rain. The fronts of these simple houses are quite open, revealing all sorts of domestic habits incident to native life, and very often outraging one's sense of propriety. Men or women care nothing for publicity, and do not hesitate in the conduct of affairs which are strictly of a personal nature.

If one desires a remedy for over-fastidiousness, let him stroll for a while about this native portion of Colombo. He will open his eyes in surprise now and then, but it is astonishing how soon one becomes indifferent to the most peculiar local customs, whether in Samoa, Japan, or among the Alaska Indians. The lazy Singhalese or Tamil men lying half asleep upon the ground, the women, semi-nude, cooking fish over a brazier in the open air, and a group of naked children playing in the roadway, form a common tableau in this quarter of the town. Every necessity seems to be provided for by the salubrity of the climate and the spontaneity of the soil. Enterprise, emulation, ambition, are to these people unknown incentives to action. The height of their desire is plenty of sleep and plenty to eat.

The scene is occasionally varied by a group of men sitting upon their heels and absorbed in gambling for small sums of money. It should be stated here that the natives, Singhalese, Tamils, Moormen, or of whatever tribe, are all inveterate gamblers; only the Chinese can equal them in this propensity to risk all they possess upon the cast of the dice, or in betting upon some other trivial game. We were told of instances where the gambler, having lost everything else, staked the possession of his wife against his opponent's money, and, losing, the woman quietly acquiesced in consummating the arrangement. Women of the humbler castes are looked upon more as slaves than as filling any other relation to those whom they call their husbands. As a rule, they would not think of asserting any will of their own. As their husbands are abject slaves to the idea of caste, so they are slaves to their husbands, and however roughly they are treated by them, they take it quite as a matter of course. In the southern part of the island especially, each village has its cock-pit and its gambling-den; while hard by is the drinking-cabin, where for a few pennies a native can get very drunk on arrack.

At some of the low-thatched cabins in the Pettah, or Black Town, we see a tame parrot or a pet monkey confined within certain bounds by a small chain. If the former, he is likely to be imitating the boisterous exclamations of the children; if the latter, finding no mischief possible, he sits chin in hand, with a ludicrously grave expression on his too human features. The ever-present crows take good care to keep out of the monkey's reach, but perch familiarly and fearlessly anywhere else about the cabins. There are several varieties of monkeys in the island. The black wanderoo of Ceylon with white whiskers comes nearest in its resemblance to the human face. He stands three feet high, and weighs between seventy and eighty pounds, being remarkable for muscular strength. The lower and the upper jaw are in a direct line with the forehead, while most of the race have projecting jaws.

The streets and environs of Constantinople are rendered hardly more disagreeable by the presence of mongrel curs than is Black Town, Colombo. Dogs abound, thoroughly useless creatures, which should have been born jackals, and which are perhaps partly breeds from that source. They are melancholy, half-starved, wretched, and mangy creatures, sleeping all day, and prowling about at night in search of some stray bit of carrion which has escaped the vigilance of the crows. Why they are tolerated no one can say, neither does any one acknowledge their ownership. Occasionally one runs mad, causing by his bite a half-dozen natives to do likewise, when death is certain. Hydrophobia is never cured, not even by the devil-dancers of Ceylon. The normal appearance of these dogs is that of abject fear, as they move about with heads drooping and their tails pressed close between their hind legs. A harsh word sends them off at top speed, while a kind one brings out their instinctive fondness for the human race. Still, they are nuisances in Ceylon, and of no earthly good to any mortal.

Evil odors are inseparable from the native quarters. That goes without saying, and it is surprising that pestilence does not run riot here. Dirt and contagious diseases certainly thrive in the same atmosphere, and yet one often sees sanitary laws, as we construe them, deliberately outraged without any such results as our best reason would lead us to expect. The author was in Rio Janeiro not long since, at a time when the yellow fever was proving fatal to fifty or sixty persons daily. In the Plaza Don Pedro Second, numbers of idle, lazy fellows lay half drunk, or wholly so, sleeping on the benches under a vertical sun. Some were quite unconscious, even lying upon the damp ground. Apropos of our remark that these people were inviting the fever, an intelligent resident, who was our companion, calmly answered: "Yellow Jack does not choose that class for its victims. They seem to enjoy complete immunity from the pestilence." Seeing was believing, but it was also confounding to one's sense of the eternal fitness of things.

Generally, the scenes and experiences are not quite pleasant as presented to the stranger who visits Black Town, Colombo, for the first time. As he becomes more familiar with the surroundings, however, a picturesque aspect, a depth of rich brown shadows and bits of vivid color, unite to form a pleasing and attractive whole.

Adjoining each of these humble homes which line the thoroughfares, or perhaps just in the rear of them, one is sure to find clusters of bread-fruit, banana, and mango trees, often dominated by a tall, gracefully bending cocoanut palm of columnar proportions. The product of these several fruit-bearers goes far towards feeding the inmates of the cabin, about which they also cast delightful and much-needed shade. Nothing is more ornamental under such circumstances than the large, drooping, pale green leaves of the generously yielding banana, contrasting with the golden yellow bunches of the ripe fruit. The nutritious properties of the banana are far in excess of any other known vegetable food. African explorers have told the author that in an emergency, when threatened with famine, they have sustained life and strength for themselves and their followers upon two bananas a day for six consecutive days, all the time engaged in the hardest sort of foot-travel through the pathless forest. The banana-tree renews itself annually, growing to a height of ten or twelve feet, and bearing heavy clusters of from sixty to a hundred individual fruits, green at first, but golden in hue when ripe. After bearing its fruit, the tree wilts and decays like a cornstalk, but in due time again springs up from the roots to bear another annual luxuriant crop. One clever writer tells us that the banana is "the devil's agent," because the abundant food supply which it affords, demanding so little of man in return, is a promoter of idleness. It is asserted that one acre of these trees will yield as much nutritious matter as sixty acres of wheat, which seems almost incredible. In many countries this fruit is the staff of life, flourishing as far as thirty-five degrees south and thirty-eight north of the equator.

There may be poverty here,—it is to be found nearly everywhere if sought for,—but there is no abject want visible, for these Singhalese homes are all surrounded by plenty. The mere physical support of life seems abundantly provided for, however the moral conditions may strike the careful observer.

Is it not a singular provision of nature that where vegetation is most thrifty, where fruits and flowers grow in wildest exuberance, elevated humanity thrives the least?

A very humble class of Moormen, Malays, Singhalese, and Tamils, together with Syrian Jews and the like, a mixed and motley population, constitute the larger portion of the community in the Pettah, but there are some buildings, shops, bazaars, and residences of a better class than those we have described. Such are mostly occupied by Parsees and Moormen, so that Black Town is not quite so "black" as might seem to the casual reader. The Moormen wear an impossible sort of hat, tall and brimless; others have sensible, broad-brimmed panamas, and some don the picturesque fez so universal in the East. The sienna-colored Singhalese proper are descended from the early conquerors of the island, the dark-brown Tamils from later invaders who came from southern India, and the copper-colored Moormen from the Arab merchants who came hither to trade for spices many centuries ago. The Singhalese have long, straight, black and silky hair, and are nearly always bareheaded. The Tamils as invariably wear turbans. According to the rules of caste, the Singhalese, being superior, has a right to go bareheaded, a privilege which is not allowed to the Tamils. This absurdity is on a par with the average rules relating to caste as enforced in India and Ceylon. Of the rights recognized under the system, none is more jealously guarded than that of carrying an umbrella to shield the bearer from the fiery heat of the sun, or the pitiless downpour of equatorial rains. In the olden times, in Kandy, only royalty and the priesthood were allowed the privilege. To the average foreigner in continental India and Ceylon, the arbitrary rule of caste seems to be the merest nonsense possible to conceive of, but to the natives it is a matter of most serious consideration, and is rigidly adhered to in all their daily relations with each other.

Here and there one comes upon a Buddhist or Hindu temple, and now we pause before a Mohammedan mosque. Each sect is eminently devout after its own fashion, and all are at liberty to follow the dictates of their own consciences. Two of our party having thoughtlessly entered one of the Hindu sanctuaries without removing their shoes, great indignation was expressed by some natives near at hand, and for a few moments it really appeared as though a downright fight would ensue. However, peace was restored at last by complying with the custom of the place, and promenading daintily through the temple in our stockings. Additional backsheesh was also awarded to the custodian of the shrine to pacify his wounded sensibilities. Before we left the spot, everybody was quite serene. To the author, the most curious part of this experience was that our little party wore their hats through it all, no objection being made. European etiquette demands of one to uncover the head as a mark of respect on special occasions, but the barbaric, or rather the oriental fashion, is to uncover the feet. There are many curious points of difference in symbols of respect. The Tamil covers his head with an ample turban out of deference to those of a higher caste, while the Singhalese proper would not think it respectful to wear anything upon his head in the presence of a superior. A Chinaman lets down his braided pigtail as a mark of respect to those above him in rank, or as a token of reverence in the temple, while a Singhalese twists his braid into a snood at the back of his head, and secures it by a shell comb, for the same purpose.

The display of vegetables and fruit offered for sale on improvised benches or tables outside of the cabins, forming groups vivid in color and novel in shape, is interesting to a stranger. The collection includes pumpkins, sweet potatoes, oranges, pineapples, mangoes, guavas, and bananas, together with zapotas, rose-apples, limes, yams, and many other varieties. They are often arranged upon broad leaves, fresh and green, which impart to them a refreshing air of coolness. Some large, handsome bunches of grapes were observed, for which a high price was asked (thirty cents per pound). These came from the northern part of the island, on the peninsula of Jaffna, where they are raised in small quantities. Ripe oranges in Ceylon have a queer habit of reaching that palatable condition while quite green externally. They are very sweet, having a thin skin and plenty of juice, together with a flavor equal to those of the Indian River district in Florida, and superior to those of California. Prices are very moderate; a large ripe pineapple costs twopence, and half a dozen oranges are sold for the same sum. Statistics show that between nine and ten thousand acres are devoted to the raising of pineapples in Ceylon, where they ripen to great perfection. The little open-air shops are called "caddies," and are always presided over by native women, who, under an air of oriental indifference as to whether you purchase their wares or not, are yet exercised by suppressed eagerness to have you do so. A few of these simple caddies were observed to be prettily decorated with wreaths of myrtle, yellow flowers, and wisps of sweet lemon grass, hung on either side of the fruit, dispensing an exquisite fragrance which dominated all the offensive odors of the locality. This arrangement betrayed a woman's hand, prompted by a certain delicacy of fancy and an eye for natural beauty. There always exists this half-effaced charm within the bosom of the humblest of the sex, whether in Crim Tartary, the Sandwich Islands, or the Parisian boulevards. The surroundings are kaleidoscopic in effect, composed of contrasting races, bronzed men in white turbans, native women very nearly nude, queer physiognomies, busy itinerant salesmen, boisterous children covered only by their copper-colored skins, mingling with native domestic servants in fancy dresses of red and yellow, and bejeweled nurses, sent by their European mistresses to purchase some favorite fruit. The scene is constantly shifting, and the combinations rapidly changing. Every fresh visit to this portion of Colombo reveals some new phases of oriental life, which are often recalled to the mind's eye when one is far away and compassed by very different surroundings.

Native women pass and repass, bearing upon their heads broad, shallow baskets full of ripe fruit or vegetables, on their way to the English portion of the town, while other itinerants offer dark brown edible cakes made from mysterious sources. The great weight which a Singhalese or Tamil woman can carry on her head is something marvelous, far exceeding that of an Irish laborer's hod of bricks or mortar borne upon the shoulder. The humbler class of Eastern women all practice this mode of transporting merchandise from the period of their early childhood, hence their steady upright pose when walking, whether bearing any burden or not. An Egyptian, Indian, or Singhalese woman who had a quart pitcher of liquid to convey any distance would not carry it in her hands, but would place it on the top of her head for safety and convenience. As a rule, the men do not carry burdens upon their heads, but when transporting merchandise, they wear upon their necks and shoulders a sort of yoke with protruding arms, upon which a couple of stout baskets hang, balancing each other, and containing the goods. One Tamil woman was noticed with a bevy of paroquets for sale, so tame that they crept about her head, arms, and shoulders, being occasionally treated to some favorite tidbit from her lips. She formed a pretty picture with her mottled green pets, an evidence also of what kindness and gentleness will accomplish.

The admirable display of fresh fish in the market is of great variety in shape and color, testifying to an abundant food supply afforded by the neighboring waters. Six hundred kinds of fish have been catalogued by scientists as being found on this coast. The river fish are of poor quality.

Doubtless the reader has heard of the "climbing perch," a tropical fish which is partially amphibious, and which abounds in Ceylon. It can make its way over the land for considerable distances in search of the nearest watercourse, when its native pond becomes dry. There is also another eccentric piscatory creature here known as the "burying fish," which, when the water subsides, makes its way down into the muddy bottom of the lake or pond, where it hibernates until the rain again furnishes it with its natural element,—a veritable "fish story," but we were assured of its truth. At Batticaloa, the capital of the eastern province, there is a lake in which "singing fish" are found. Over these aquatic curiosities scientists have held many interesting sessions. What with burying fish, climbing perch, and singing fish, Ceylon would seem to have rather more than her just share of piscatory curiosities.

When the dry season sets in and the watercourses cease to flow, the Ceylon elephant deliberately digs himself a well in the sandy bed of the rivers, using for the purpose both his ivory grubbers and the horny toes of his forefeet. Digging a few feet downwards generally brings water for the quenching of the huge animal's thirst. Unerring instinct (superior to human reason) guides him in selecting the proper spot in which to dig his well, to which he returns daily, and when the season of drought is prolonged, he sometimes deepens it. When the severity of a Norwegian winter exhausts all other sources of food supply for the herds, the deer dig with their forefeet deep through the snow to reach the reindeer moss upon which to browse. They make no mistake in selecting the right spot, but always find the moss where they dig. The most experienced owners of the herds would be puzzled to indicate the proper places to seek the moss beneath the deep snow.

In contradistinction to all oriental ideas and the eternal fitness of things, while we watch the passing show of native life, our ears are saluted by the discordant notes of a bass drum, a bugle, and a fife. Presently there comes into view a score or less of Europeans of both sexes, the men wearing a sort of uniform cloth cap, and the half-dozen women, poke bonnets. Of course they represent the Salvation Army. How sadly out of place they seem to be here! These "missionaries," as they call themselves, have never been known to make a proselyte from this brown-skinned people, so far as we could learn, while they are generally regarded by the Europeans as a class who have taken up with this craze as a last resort after having exhausted all other means in their endeavors to obtain a living without working for it. Still it must be admitted that there never was a fad or folly, however absurd, without some honest disciples,—weak, but conscientious advocates.

CHAPTER IX.

The English Part of Colombo.—Army Reserves.—Ceylon an Independent Colony.—"A Paternal Despotism."—Educational Facilities.—Buddhism versus Christianity.—Public Buildings.—The Museum.—Domestic Dwellings.—Suburb of Colpetty.—The Lake of Colombo.—A Popular Driveway.—A Sunset Scene.—Excursion to the Kelani Temple.—The Jinrikisha.—Current Diseases.—Native Jugglers.—Hypnotism.—Houdon, the French Magician, astonishes the Natives.—The Thieving Crows.

In that part of Colombo known as the Fort, and situated south of the Pettah, the English have spacious and well-arranged barracks, of sufficient size to accommodate five thousand men of all arms. Of course, no such force is required in Ceylon, and there are not such a number of troops here at the present writing. The island is peaceful enough, but the object of the British government is to maintain here, as well as at Malta, a body of disciplined men ready for immediate service, and especially prepared to reinforce the army of India in case of an emergency. The judiciousness of this precaution was well illustrated in 1857, when this station, from its small military force, afforded such material aid at the outbreak of what the English call the Indian mutiny, before alluded to.

This island, though it is a British colony like India, so near at hand, is quite separate from it in governmental organization. Ceylon is presided over by a governor appointed by the Queen of England, who is aided in his official position by an executive council and a small legislative body of fifteen or twenty individuals. Some one has called the government of Ceylon "a paternal despotism." All ordinances are submitted to the approval of Her Majesty before they become registered law. The island is divided into provinces, each governed by a civil servant, having under him a staff of European and native assistants. The Roman-Dutch law, so termed, is the law of the island in all cases not otherwise provided for. The government furnishes means for the education of the rising generation, in the form of free schools, which advantage, though not universally improved, is yet reasonably successful. This is particularly commendable when it is remembered that the government of England has remained far behind other civilized countries in cultivating the intelligence of her people at home. It was not until so late as 1870 that she entered upon a system of free schools for the masses. The natives of Colombo are shrewd enough, in many cases, to see material good in giving their children regular school instruction, though they have not themselves enjoyed such a privilege. In this connection it is well to speak of St. Thomas' College, which is situated in the northeast suburb of the capital, about a couple of miles from the Grand Oriental Hotel, close by Christ Church Cathedral. This college is near the shore, in a most healthful and airy location, the suburb being known as Mutwal, where the Kelani River enters the sea. Here, between two and three hundred young men, composed of Singhalese, Tamils, and the descendants of Portuguese and Dutch colonists, are in constant attendance. Close at hand there is also a high school for girls, admirably conducted, whose educational advantages are availed of by a goodly number of natives.

Here let us diverge for a single moment.

Secular education is the true and only available missionary among Asiatic tribes. Honest and experienced religionists are beginning to see and admit the correctness of this conclusion. The preaching to them by various Christian sects of very contradictory tenets of faith confuses these simple people, who are still often shrewd enough to detect broad inconsistencies, as well as to analyze and reason concerning missionary efforts among them. They say very logically to those representatives who are sent from America or Europe: "We are agreed here upon Buddhism. When you Christians can agree among yourselves as to which of your many doctrines is the right one, it will be time enough for you to try to teach us to discard a faith which our fathers have believed for thousands of years." More than one intelligent Singhalese has expressed himself to this effect in our presence. We leave it to the reader if these people are not perfectly logical in their position.

Who can wonder that confusion inevitably arises in the simple mind of a native of this Indian isle, who attempts to reconcile our multitudinous sects and schisms?

We were speaking of the English portion of Colombo, which consists of a few broad streets shaded by thrifty tulip-trees, an official residence known as Government House, the long line of barracks already referred to, a cathedral, a clock-tower (serving also as a lighthouse), a club-house, hospital, some indifferent shops, two or three banking establishments, a public library, and three or four large hotels. The Colombo Library is situated on the corner of Queen Street, and contains some twenty-five thousand volumes. Its facilities are freely shared by strangers as well as by the citizens. The lighthouse referred to is a hundred and thirty-two feet above sea level; that on the end of the breakwater is a trifle less than forty feet. The former shows a triple flash at brief intervals, visible at night some twenty miles at sea. Among its ancient buildings, much interest centres upon the Dutch church, and its curious old graveyard.

There are no less than six newspapers published in this circumscribed community; two are in Singhalese, one in Tamil, and three in English. We do not imagine that they have much of a circulation, and yet unless they were self-supporting they would not probably be issued. Type-setting is cheap in Colombo, and the quality of the paper used is inexpensive.

The Museum of Colombo is a rather handsome and quite substantial two-story building, situated near Victoria Park, which was formerly a part of the famous Cinnamon Gardens, originally planted by the Dutch. The collection of curiosities in the museum embraces a large number, which have been found mostly upon the island, and includes many interesting specimens of preserved birds, together with large and small native animals and beautiful shells. There are also some literary and historical treasures relating to Ceylon preserved here, among which is a rare collection of palm-leaf manuscripts, both in Pali and Singhalese, bound after an original fashion. The edifice, which was built in 1877, is pleasantly situated, and surrounded by well-arranged, cultivated grounds. The entrance is free to all.

Near the Colombo terminus of the Kandy road is the pleasant public resort known as the Gordon Gardens, named in honor of Sir Arthur Gordon, a former governor of Ceylon. This area was his personal gift to the capital in memory of the jubilee of Her Majesty's reign. The gardens are rendered very attractive on each Friday afternoon by the performance of a military band; free outdoor instrumental concerts are also given every week on the Galle Face.

A few of the better class of dwelling-houses in Colombo are finished externally in stucco, all having the inevitable and indispensable broad veranda. Surrounding these homes honeysuckles, crimson hibiscus, azaleas, cape jessamines, oleanders, and other flowering plants abound, with here and there little rocky mounds of lilies, cacti, and low ferns; while the familiar palms, mangoes, and bananas always make their appearance somewhere on the premises. Tennis courts give an English look to the surroundings of the bungalows. The unfortunate prevalence of dampness often proves very destructive inside these picturesque residences. There are seasons when books and papers, if exposed, are so seriously injured that they decay like ripe fruit. Boots and shoes become mouldy in a single night, and other articles are similarly affected.

Colpetty is the name of a very attractive suburb of the capital, intersected by finely macadamized, level roads, which are kept in admirable condition, running beneath shady bamboos and bending palms, where the delightful fragrance of flowers is always present. Here a small colony of Europeans have made for themselves delightful tropical homes, half hidden by the abundant vegetation behind beautiful shade trees where swinging hammocks and low music tell of delicious idleness and restful ease. If you pass through the embowered ways of this district after nightfall, your path will be lighted by glow-worms and fireflies, just as phosphorescence illumines the darkness upon the waters traversed by a ship's hull. It is the bedtime of the flowers, but their fragrance lingers in the atmosphere and affords the most careless participant sensuous delight. Here, as in many tropical regions, the bungalows bear curious individual names, such as: Whist Bungalow, The Rotunda, The Snuggery, Monsoon Villa, The Rainbow, Storm Lodge, Palmyra Cottage, and so on. A similar custom prevails in the West Indies.

In a small front yard of a bungalow at Colpetty, a few climbing vines of the old-fashioned pink, purple, and white morning-glory greeted the eye like the smile of a half-forgotten friend. How familiar and suggestive they were in their sweet simplicity. One thrifty vine had found lodgment upon a tall Norfolk Island pine, clinging upon its singularly uniform branches, and making altogether a most delightful combination of color. In the same inclosure were several tall trees of the bell-shaped, white datura, the large flowers depending in great profusion, as beautiful to the eye as they are poisonous to the palate.

The unending night concerts of the ground and tree frogs in this vicinity are marvelous for the aggregated noise they produce. At the expense of calling down anathemas from the good friends whose hospitality we enjoyed there, it must be added that this croaking was almost unbearable; worse, if possible, than the symphony and variations of the tuneful mosquitoes.

The large, fresh-water lake formed by the Kalani-Gunga, which, on its course from the hills to the sea, covers nearly a hundred miles, straggles about the town in irregular lines, so that at one point it very nearly joins the sea. This river has been crossed at Colombo for many years by a bridge of boats, which has several times been carried away by the turbulent stream during the season of floods. A substantial iron girder roadway has lately been added to facilitate travel. The old bridge is formed by a score of boats firmly anchored, stem and stern, in a straight line, and supporting a platform laid upon crossbeams, which is fastened to the boats. The roadway is about five hundred feet long, the river being nearly that width at the point where the boats are placed. In olden times, there was a regularly established ferry here, but the bridge of boats has served transportation to better purpose for many years. There are now few rivers of any importance upon frequented routes in Ceylon which are left unbridged, most of the structures being of stone and iron, and built after the best modern system. The lake, with its surroundings, forms one of the great beauties of Colombo, covering a broad expanse dotted with islands fringed by tropical verdure, and embellished with many fragrant gardens. The view across the still water, with its grand mountain background in the blue distance, is exquisite, particularly at the close of day, when the sunset leaves upon its surface a broad crimson gleam like a roseate blush suffusing a beautiful face. Upon its glassy surface a few pleasure boats add variety to the aquatic picture. There is a charming driveway or promenade extending quite round the lake, and following all its sinuosities amid low, broad-spread bungalows, cocoanut palms, plantains, and bread-fruit-trees. Occasional waterfowls float among the cosy bays, or swim out upon the lake, engaged in voyages of discovery.