Chapter VI: To the Hills

To the hills—Rice-fields—The railway—Kitool and talipot palms—Olas—
Bread-fruit—Jak—Papaw—Kapok—Road-making—Major Skinner—Gampola—The
Delta—Rambodda Pass—Pallagolla.

Soon after our return we spent an interesting forenoon at Cotta, about six miles from Colombo, a very pretty place, where the river broadens so as to form a clear calm lake, embosomed in groves of cocoa-palms. Cotta has the double interest of having been the residence of the Singhalese kings at the time when the Portuguese first came to bring misery, discord, and war, and the modern and most peaceful interest of having been a very important station of the Church Missionary Society, almost ever since it first commenced work in Ceylon in 1818. A printing-press was then established here, which has been to the Singhalese all that the American press at Jaffna has been to the Tamils. (See concluding chapter.)

A very important branch of the work here is the Training Institution for Native Students of Divinity and Schoolmasters. The fact that (although selected from the most promising pupils in all parts of the Isle) these at present only number respectively five and four, speaks volumes for the difficulty of filling these important posts.

Another very important feature is the boarding-school, open to any Singhalese girl of good character, irrespective of caste or religion. It has been open about sixteen years, during which time about 250 girls have been trained, some remaining for ten years. A considerable number become Christians and teachers in the schools. The same may be said of the English school for boys, which has an average attendance of ninety, of whom nearly half are Buddhists, all of whom, however, voluntarily attend the Scripture classes.

Troops of pretty, happy-looking children, boys and girls, from the various schools had assembled to greet the Bishop; and in the crowded church were no less than fifty-three candidates for confirmation, all Singhalese and Burghers.

Early on the following morning we started for the hills, travelling by the beautiful railway, which is certainly one of the loveliest lines of rail I know of. Part of it reminded me of that through the Bombay Ghauts. But, ere reaching the mountain district, we traversed a wide expanse of swampy paddy-fields, most refreshing to the eyes, the intensely vivid green of the young rice-crops far exceeding that of our own wheat-fields.

It is a cultivation involving much toil, and singularly unpleasant to those engaged in it, as from first to last it is all in mud. To begin with that on level ground, each tiny field must be scooped out so as to form a small lakelet several feet deep, the mud thus obtained forming an embankment which retains the water, so that the rice may never be dry till it is fully ripe. These embankments form the footpaths by which the people travel from field to field.

On hillsides the toil is of a different sort. There it consists in building up terraces, tier above tier, for many hundred feet, so as to produce a succession of tiny lakes, curving with the formation of the ground, each supported in front by a solid embankment, which in some cases is five or six feet in depth. These are constructed with least trouble in glens and valleys where the ground forms an angle, and where a stream flows naturally; but I have seen steep hillsides so terraced as to present a most singular effect of small lakes, fed by rivulets carefully led to the summit from some distant source.

By this contrivance all available water is distributed and stored during the dry season, and when the rains come, the superfluous water flows from one tier of tank-like terraces to the next without washing away the soil. Thus, thanks to the patient industry of the husbandmen, almost precipitous hillsides are green with waving rice-crops. At all times the contrivances for irrigation are suggestive of infinite pains, small water-courses being led by aqueducts of mud and stone or bamboo to carry tiny rivers of life through miles of jungle, from the cool hills to the parched plains below. The cultivation of the steep hillsides is exactly the same as in the Himalayas, and the narrow fields are ploughed with the same antediluvian hand-implements.

The cultivation of the plains is less toilsome. When the ground has been thoroughly saturated, the water is turned off, and the soil is stirred to a depth of about eighteen inches by a very primitive plough drawn by two buffaloes. Then the water is turned on again, and on the flat ground herds of buffaloes are allowed to wade at will and wallow in the mud, till it becomes so fluid as to sink to a perfect level. The buffaloes thus incrusted with mud are truly disgusting-looking objects, and present a most curious contrast to the long-legged, pure white paddy-birds which stalk after them as inseparable companions.

The rice (which has been previously well soaked) is now scattered on the level surface—most literally casting bread upon the waters, to be found after many days. In about a fortnight the black mud is carpeted to a depth of four inches with the loveliest green. The water is run off and on alternately till just before the grain is ripe, when the ground is allowed to dry, preparatory to harvest.

Where water does not fail, these fields yield two crops annually—the _maha_, or great crop, sown in spring and reaped in early autumn; the second, called _yalla_, sown about July and reaped in December. Hence, about the month of September, there may be harvesting of ripe grain and treading-out of corn by unmuzzled oxen or buffaloes in some fields, while others are being ploughed by buffaloes or just appearing in sheets of fresh young green. The exact dates are regulated by the somewhat uncertain coming of the monsoons (in Biblical language, ‘the former and latter rains’), due in the southern provinces in May and November.

Simple and idyllic as this primitive farming seems to the casual observer, these verdant fields are sometimes the occasion of wearisome lawsuits; for, as according to Singhalese custom all property is equally divided among a man’s heirs, and then again subdivided, it follows that a score of owners may share in the cultivation of a small paddy-field, and in the division of its crop.

Other fields are the common property of a whole village, and the produce has to be divided in certain proportions among the villagers, from the owner of the buffaloes employed to plough and trample the land, down to the dhoby who does the village washing. I may add that the word ‘paddy’ means unhusked rice, of which two bushels yield one of cleaned rice.

Leaving the level plain, we gradually ascended—upward, still upward, all the way, wending round sharp curves and by many zigzags, so that we could sometimes see both the last carriage of the train and the engines! The carriages are provided with broad white roofs and Venetian shutters as some protection against the sun. The engines are all of the most powerful construction, as well they may be, seeing that for upwards of twelve miles, while rounding the flank of Allagalla, a grand craggy mountain, the uniform gradient is 1 in 45. By the time we reached the summit of Kadugannawa Pass, about sixty miles from Colombo, we had ascended 1,700 feet. In front of each engine is a ‘cow-catcher,’ intended to sweep off any inquisitive animals which may rashly wander on to the line. Unfortunately even this is not always effectual, and the carelessness of owners of cattle in allowing their animals to stray upon the railway is incredible. The railway report for 1890 shows that 129 bullocks and cows were run over by trains during the year, besides occasional buffaloes. Last May a herd of these were run into near Polgahawela station, and though some were swept aside, one was run over, causing the wheels to run off the rails. Fortunately the train was stopped ere grave damage was done.

It is a single broad-gauge line, and in truth, when we see what frightful engineering difficulties had to be overcome in its construction, the succession of tunnels (one of which, through Moragalla, is 365 feet in length), and the skirting of precipitous crags, we can understand something of the causes which limited its width.

Worse even than the stubborn rocks of the mountains in the central province was the awful malaria, which in those days was so prevalent in some of the low-lying inland districts, that it was almost certain death to sleep in them. The coolies who worked on the line died by hundreds; and in the tract lying between Mirigama and the Dekanda valley, so many perished that at last there literally was not found room for their burial within easy distance of the line. As the only possibility of keeping them alive, it was found necessary to take them all back to Colombo every night, a distance of about fifty miles. Of the Europeans in charge of the works, one after another succumbed, and had to be shipped off from Ceylon with health shattered by the deadly fever.[49]

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Footnote 49:

Possibly some of the many victims of jungle fever in other lands may
be disposed to try the simple remedy described in a letter to the
editor of the _Ceylon Observer_ . The writer states that his stalwart
brother had, from repeated attacks of Indian jungle fever, dwindled to
a mere skeleton, when a _fakir_ came to his tent and offered to
permanently cure him.

His _materia medica_ were of the simplest, consisting only of a flat
piece of iron and a bottle of sugar-cane vinegar. The former was made
red-hot, and the vinegar was poured over it, the patient inhaling the
fumes. This operation was repeated only a second time, and from that
day forward, in the thirteen years up to date of the letter, the
sufferer never had a return of fever, and quite recovered his health.

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Now, doubtless owing to improved drainings, and to the wholesale cleaning of the jungle to make room for divers forms of cultivation, the pestilential malaria is a story of the past; and of the dense impenetrable forest which fifty years ago clothed the steep Kadugannawa Pass only a few trees remain, and there is nothing whatever to suggest to the luxurious traveller what pains and perils were endured, and how many lives were sacrificed, ere this splendid line was opened even thus far. Indeed, on one’s first journey, there is no time for any impressions save those of wonder and admiration at the rapidly changing panorama of most beautiful scenery.

Even when gliding along the face of sheer crags, looking down on the valley a thousand feet below, one scarcely realises the situation. For myself, frequently passing and repassing up and down this line, and living for happy weeks in its neighbourhood, always pencil in hand, I learnt to realise something of what must have been the dangers involved in constructing such portions as ‘The Bear’s Mouth,’ ‘Sensation Rock,’ and the half-tunnel gallery along the face of the Meeangalla precipice.

And yet all these are said to be plain sailing as compared with the difficulties which are now being successfully overcome by the engineers of the extension to Haputale, which is opening up much of the grandest scenery in the isle; so that almost ere these pages are published, the most easy-going tourist will be able, without the smallest exertion, to see whole districts which hitherto have been inaccessible even to old residents. And not in this direction only, but north, south, east, and west, the necessity of railway extension is being recognised; and in a very few years, so far as any difficulty is concerned, travelling to any corner of Ceylon will be as matter-of-fact as a journey from London to Edinburgh.

The railway system in Ceylon is entirely in the hands of Government, and it is urged by those who plead for extension, that opening up the country will certainly lead to great increase of traffic and consequent revenue. With the exception of that between Kandy and Matala, the lines hitherto constructed are said to be about the best paying in the world. As to the stations, so much care is bestowed on their gardens that each is a thing of beauty, embowered in luxuriant climbing plants, and all manner of fragrant and brilliant flowers. All names are written up in English, Tamil, and Singhalese, in their respective characters, so that all travellers may read, every man in his own tongue, unperplexed by the hateful advertisements which disfigure our British stations.

At each, pretty Singhalese children offer for sale baskets of tempting fruit, and cool refreshing young cocoa-nuts which they cut open, and hand all ready to the thirsty traveller. Fortunately for sight-seers, the rate of travel is not excessive, twenty-eight miles an hour being the utmost speed on the very best bit of level, while on the steep incline twelve miles an hour is the regulation limit, and at one point rather less.

There is so much to see on either side, that eyes and mind must be constantly on duty, whether looking right up to the mountains overhead, or down to the grand valley outspread far, far below, all clothed with richest vegetation, every variety of palm mingling with endless varieties of hardwood, while the little terraced rice-fields on the slopes of the hills, and those on the flat expanse below, either present sheets of the most dazzling green or seem like a mosaic of innumerable tiny lakes. And on every side of this great valley rise hills of every variety of form—a billowy sea of mountain-ranges, all glorified by ever-changing effects of light and shadow, veiling mist or sweeping storm, followed by that ‘clear shining after rain,’ which daily reveals new beauties in mountain regions.

To me that scene recalls endless pleasant memories of happy days and weeks spent in exploring many a lovely corner in that vast panorama— memories of the cordial hospitality which gave me welcome to nest-like homes on many a hill and valley, and of one in particular, to which I was welcomed again and again, perched at the base of the mighty crag which crowns Allagalla Peak—which is a beautiful isolated mountain, 3,394 feet in height—from the summit of which, it is said, the Kandyan monarchs were wont to precipitate persons accused of high treason.

That home was in a sheltered nook embosomed in fruit-trees, and overlooking such a magnificent view as we may sometimes obtain for a few moments by climbing some mighty Alp, but which few homes can claim as their perpetual outlook.

Thence far below us, and yet far above the valley, we could discern two narrow lines, and we knew that the lower one was the cart-road and the upper one the railroad, and suddenly a double puff of steam would rise, and there, darting from a tunnel, was a long train with an engine at either end, labouring on its tortuous up-hill course, winding round the steep hillside. It was so far below us that it seemed like a fairy’s toy, and yet it gave us a sense of touch with our fellow-creatures which in so isolated an eyrie was rather pleasant.

As we gradually ascended from the sea-level we observed a very marked change in the character of the vegetation, one of the most conspicuous trees being covered with bunches of white blossom, which in the distance resemble our own white lilac; the young leaves being pure white, and all silvery on the under side, so that, when swaying in the breeze, the tree contrasts prettily with its neighbours. I believe it is a croton, though utterly unlike the very gorgeously coloured members of that family. This is called by the Singhalese _kekuna_, and from its nuts they used to extract an oil for lamps. In Fiji, where we found the identical tree and much of the identical vegetation, these are known as candle-nuts, and I have seen them strung on the rib of a palm-leaf to act as candles, and very dull was the light they gave!

A far more showy tree is the Moratuwa (_Lagerstrœmia regina_), which flourishes near streams, growing to a height of from forty to fifty feet, and bears splendid upright spikes, two or three feet in length, of exquisite blossoms, varying from a delicate rose-colour to rich purple. Think of the most beautiful horse-chestnut you ever saw, and magnify and glorify its wealth of blossom, and you can perhaps form some idea of this beautiful tree. It flowers on Allagalla in the month of April. (I am told that these trees are in their glory in the Bintenna district, near Mahaoya village, where the whole western side of the Mahaoya river presents a blaze of rosy purple, and stretching along the river-bed of yellow sand, relieved by a background of dark green, a gorgeous scene in the bright morning light.)

And trees here rarely stand naked and alone, as in England; they are generally enriched by graceful parasites, ferns, or perhaps orchids, clothe stem and boughs, and a great variety of lianas climb to the very summit of the tallest trees, and droop thence in long trails or festoons of delicate greenery, connecting a whole group of trees with their verdant veiling, often starred with white or blue convolvulus.

Near the sea, and indeed so far inland as the saturated sea breeze carries the salt spray, the vegetation is often so encrusted with salt, that the young leaves seem partially blighted; but only in gales of unusual violence is the brine carried so far as this, and it would be difficult to conceive foliage richer and more beautiful than that through which we were now passing. It seemed as though Mother Nature must have taxed all her inventive powers to devise an infinite variety of graceful forms. I noticed this especially in the matter of palms, which are at all times peculiarly fascinating, but on some isles only one or two flourish, and from their multitude they become monotonous. But here the eye can never weary, so amazing is the diversity of form and colour presented to it in ever-changing combination of strangely dissimilar palms, tree-ferns, and all manner of hardwood, bearing large leaves or small, leathery or woolly, in endless variety.

Though we had left the seaboard (the special region of the brine-loving cocoa-palm), there were still enough of those graceful bending stems and long waving fronds to contrast with the picturesque clumps of stiff fan-leaved palmyra-palms (with rough dark stems upright as pillars, crowned by capitals of glossy green), and with the slender silvery areca, so slender that a stem seventy or eighty feet high does not exceed five or six in diameter.

The latter flourishes at any altitude from the sea-level up to about 3,000 feet, and is sometimes planted to mark estate boundaries, and sometimes as an avenue.

Totally different from these or from any other member of the beautiful clan palm, and to me most attractive of all, was the kitool or jaggery palm (_Caryota urens_). Its leaves are just like gigantic fronds of the lovely maiden-hair fern of our hothouses. It is the richest and most beautiful foliage that can be imagined, and its mode of flowering is very remarkable. Till the last year of its life, by which time it has attained a height of fifty or sixty feet, it bears leaves only, then from the axil of the topmost leaf it throws out a large cluster of flowers, and as this fades, another and another cluster flowers all the way down the tree, alternately male and female, until the lowest leaf-axil is reached, and the mass of fruitage is such that the exhausted tree then dies.

The fruit is as unique as the leaf, for instead of bearing about a hundred large nuts in clusters like other palms, it produces an innumerable multitude of juicy berries about the size of grapes, growing in festoons several feet in length, like heavy drapery.

Under the impression that the natives eat these sweet berries, I was one day tempted to taste them; but the rash experiment was immediately followed by a burning pain in my lips, which continued unabated for some hours, notwithstanding the application of oil, water, lime-juice, everything we could think of. It was rather alarming, although I knew it could not be poison, inasmuch as the natives manufacture both sugar and palm-wine from the saccharine sap, obtained by bruising the undeveloped blossom, and this coarse brown jaggery-sugar is rather a pleasant sweetmeat.

A good tree sometimes yields a hundred pints of this sweet sap or toddy in twenty-four hours. When the tree dies, good sago is obtained from its pith: and its hard black timber is valuable for house-building, and also, from its being tough and pliable, is generally used for making the pingoes or yokes, six or eight feet in length, which are balanced on the shoulder and used for carrying loads slung from either end, the elastic spring of the pingo greatly lessening the dead weight thus carried. The leaf-stalks yield a black fibre, from which are prepared fine lines for fishing and ropes stout enough to bind elephants.

But the PALM of PALMS, of which I now for the first time saw a considerable number, each in solitary grandeur, is the talipot,[50] or great fan-palm, the stately monarch of the palm kingdom, whose grand green crown far overtops all its fellows. For the first thirty years of its life it grows only magnificent fan-shaped leaves like those of the palmyra, but much larger.

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Footnote 50:

_Corypha umbraculifera._

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If there be any truth in the legend which affirms Ceylon to have been the Paradise of our first parents, it must be confessed that Eve showed a truly feminine love of sewing in her selection of foliage, as a single leaf of the talipot palm would have been amply sufficient for train and mantle—being on an average eighteen feet in length (sometimes very much larger), and all ready folded into plaits like those of a lady’s dress.

The natives turn these leaves to a thousand uses, domestic and literary. When on a journey (and especially pilgrims bound for sacred shrines in the wilds) each carries a portion of one of these great leaves, tightly folded into a long narrow form, like a gigantic closed fan. This serves as a sun-shade or rain-cloak by day, and at night several friends contribute every man his palm-leaf—three or four of these, with the pointed end upwards, forming a very fair bell-shaped tent; and very picturesque a few groups of these look when pitched in some forest glade round their camp-fires.

In old days the exact grade of every great Singhalese or Kandyan noble was shown by the number of such sun-shades which he was entitled to have carried before him; and on state occasions a richly ornamented leaf, inlaid with pieces of glittering talc, and folded like a huge fan, formed the ceremonial canopy which was held above his head by one or more attendants.[51]

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Footnote 51:

I embodied many curious details regarding the honorific use of the
sun-shade in all ages and all countries in a paper on ‘Pagodas,
Umbrellas, and Aurioles,’ which appeared in the _English Illustrated
Magazine_ for June and July 1888.

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The leaves attain their largest size when the tree is about twenty years of age, at which time they sometimes measure twenty-five feet from the base of the leaf-stalk to the outer edge of the fan. As the tree grows older, the leaves are smaller—the strength of the tree being absorbed in preparation for its gigantic final effort of blossom and fruition.

After the first ten years a visible trunk begins to form, and for perhaps thirty years more it grows steadily, till the grand white stem towers, straight as a mast, to a height of upwards of a hundred feet, sustaining the magnificent crown of gigantic leaves. Like most of the palm family, the stem bears ring-marks where the annual leaves have gripped it.

The tree attains maturity at about forty years of age, when it slowly develops one huge bud fully four feet high. In course of time the expanding blossom bursts its prison, and develops into an enormous spike of hermaphrodite flowers taking about three months to perfect a majestic pyramid of snowy plumes composed of multitudinous small cream-coloured flowers, something like those of the yucca, and of an almost overpowering scent. These form one splendid mass of blossom, rising from the heart of the leafy crown to a height of from twenty to twenty-five feet, towering far above the surrounding foliage. This stupendous cluster throws out lateral branches, of which the lower tier sometimes measures twenty feet—the base of the pyramid thus having a diameter of forty feet! It is a glorious object, and is visible from an immense distance, as this palm so often grows among flat surroundings, such as rice-fields.

But the tree, which for well-nigh half a century has been accumulating strength for this one supreme effort, never recovers the exhaustion of such tremendous exertion. Its latest energies are lavished on the ripening of its one crop of innumerable, but I believe useless, nuts, each about the size of a small apple. Then, having fulfilled its mission right nobly, and borne down by the weight of its crop, the noble tree sickens, its leaves wither, the soft upper end of the stem decays; then the roots likewise decay, and within a year of the date when the great blossom-spike first began to appear, the dead tree falls prostrate— leaving its crown of precious leaves as a last legacy to its owner. (Though indigenous to Ceylon and the adjacent coast of Malabar, this palm is nowhere found wild.)

Strange to say, the talipot is of a gregarious habit as regards flowering. Some years many are in blossom, and a noble sight they present. I believe I was peculiarly fortunate in the number which I saw simultaneously between Kandy and Colombo. Then for perhaps eight or ten years there are very few. If cut while the tree is still young, it yields a white pith, of which the natives make cakes; but naturally so precious a tree is not sacrificed needlessly.

The leaves, when carefully prepared, are the equivalent of our vellum. The most precious ancient manuscripts were all inscribed with a sharp-pointed metal style on long narrow strips of talipot-leaf; a number of these being strung together form a volume. These are carefully tied up between two long narrow covers, which may be only painted wooden boards, but, in the case of old temple books, are sometimes highly ornamented and even enriched with precious gems. In some cases these covers are of embossed gold or silver. There are very fine specimens in the Temple Library at Kandy.

The preparation of the _olas_ or ‘vellum’ strips is done by the junior priests and students in Buddhist monasteries. Tender young leaves are selected, and the ribs having been removed, the leaf is cut into strips, which are boiled in spring-water and then slowly dried in the shade, and finally in the sun, after which they are again damped, and each is individually polished by being drawn backwards and forwards for about twenty minutes over the smooth stem of an areca palm, which for convenience’ sake is tied horizontally between two trees. The olas, which are now of a delicate straw colour, are then rolled up, and kept in store ready for use.

For ordinary books and letters, the olas are prepared from the leaves of the far more abundant palmyra-palm. Even in these days, when foreign manufactured paper is so cheap and abundant, the palm-leaf happily still continues in favour—even the narrow fronds of the cocoa-palm affording a never-failing supply of ready-made writing materials, the hard mid-rib acting as a pen when no sharper implement is at hand. I may add that Singhalese writing is very neat and small, and it is wonderful to see what straight lines are produced by writers who have no support for the strip except their own left hand.

In marked contrast with these stately fan-palms, and with the light waving plumes of the cocoas, are the bread-fruit trees, with their masses of dark-green foliage and large pale-green fruit nestling beneath separate crowns of splendid glossy leaves, deeply indented. I have measured a good many of these leaves, and found some on young trees which actually measured 3 feet 2 inches by 2 feet 4 inches, while others on older trees averaged 21 to 25 inches in length. Each of these great leaves act as a mirror to reflect the light, so that the bread-fruit tree casts no great depth of shadow (_Artocarpus incisa_).

Of course everyone who sees a bread-fruit tree for the first time longs to taste the natural hot buttered rolls of his childhood’s fancy; but I fear the result is generally disappointing. Personally I have had abundant opportunities of tasting it in all its preparations, and I cannot say I greatly appreciate any of them, whether boiled or baked, as in Fiji and Tahiti, or made into glutinous _poi_ in Hawaii. From the fact that this grand tree is not even named by so accurate an observer as Sir James Emerson Tennent, I assume that, common as it now is, it must be one of the many importations of the last half-century; for Ceylon, like New Zealand, has proved so good a stepmother to all manner of trees and flowers, that it is only by reference to the earliest botanists that we can trace what plants are really indigenous.

Among these, I think, we may rank a first cousin of the bread-fruit tree—namely, the jak (_Artocarpus integrifolia_)—a large tree with less attractive foliage, which, however, casts a deeper shadow (a valuable consideration beneath a tropical noonday sun). It produces the largest of all edible fruits, one tree bearing perhaps a hundred, some weighing as much as sixty pounds; and its extraordinary peculiarity lies in the manner in which it carries them, hanging by short thick stalks, not only from the actual trunk of the tree and the thickest part of the boughs, but sometimes even from the roots!

They are enclosed in a rough green skin, and, when ripe, the interior of the fruit is a thick yellow substance, which is eaten raw, and in which are embedded a number of kernels, each the size of a large filbert-nut. These, if the fruit is gathered unripe, are either roasted or used as a vegetable curry, much appreciated by the natives, though not in favour with Europeans. The wood of the jak-tree is highly valued by carpenters for making furniture, and a strong bird-lime is prepared from its milky juice—not sap, the two being totally distinct, as in indiarubber trees.

This milk is used as a varnish for the very gaudily painted pottery-ware peculiar to Kandy, on which temple processions or scenes in Buddhist mythology are depicted in the crudest and most brilliant colours. Some vases are simply covered with patterns. The effect is peculiar, but by no means artistic.

Next perhaps comes a wide-spreading indiarubber tree, with dark thick leathery leaves and strangely twisted snake-like roots, and then a glimpse of brown-thatched huts and blue smoke, half hidden by orange and lemon, lime or shaddock trees, tall maize or sugar-cane, or flowering hibiscus, with here and there the slender stem of a papaw,[52] fifteen to twenty feet in height, supporting a crown of very large beautifully cut-out leaves, beneath which hang bunches of fruit like small green melons, with yellow flesh, which are either cooked or eaten raw with pepper and salt. The seeds have a hot pungent taste.

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Footnote 52:

_Carica papaya._

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The fruit is considered useful as an aid to digestion, and an excellent vegetable pepsine can be prepared from the green fruit by mixing its milky, rather acid, juice with alcohol. The combination precipitates papaïn, which is then dried in the sun or on a hot plate, and powdered, and must be kept in well-stoppered bottles, ready for use in cases of dyspepsia. It is said to be superior to the ordinary animal pepsine, and has proved a valuable remedy in the treatment of tapeworm.

The stem of the papaw is covered with a pretty diamond-shaped pattern, and the general appearance of the plant is that of a very tall umbrella. It has one very curious property—namely, that tough fresh meat hung up under the shadow of its crown of leaves becomes tender in a very few hours. Of course it must also be closely wrapped in leaves to protect it from flies.

As we journey onward we pass clumps of graceful golden-stemmed bamboos, elegant acacias, feathery tamarind-trees, which, strange to say, notwithstanding the delicacy of their foliage, are found to cast the coolest of all shade; thorny coral-trees,[53] which, ere the leaves appear, are covered with scarlet pea-shaped blossoms; and tall perfectly upright cotton-trees,[54] called by the Singhalese Katu-Imbul.

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Footnote 53:

_Erythrina indica._

Footnote 54:

_Bombax malabaricum._

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These throw out stiff lateral branches in groups of three, about six feet apart, from a vividly green stem. The branches, like those of the coral-tree, are loaded with cup-shaped crimson blossoms ere any leaves develop, and afterwards bear large green pods, containing black seeds embedded in silky white cotton, which floats away like snowflakes in the sunny breeze. This silky down is called _imbul-pulun_ or simply _pulun_, a name curiously resembling that of _pulu_, which is the Hawaiian name for the silky brown fluff collected from certain tree-ferns, and used for stuffing the softest of mattresses and pillows.[55]

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Footnote 55:

See ‘Fire-Fountains of Hawaii.’ By C. F. Gordon Cumming. Published by
William Blackwood & Sons.

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Owing to the trouble of separating this cotton or _pulun_ from the seeds, it has hitherto been collected in a very desultory way, and is only used for stuffing cushions, the fibre being so short and brittle that no means of spinning it has yet been discovered. Latterly, however, a considerable demand for it has arisen, chiefly in Australia, for stuffing mattresses, and under the Malay name of _kapok_ a considerable amount has been exported, but so carelessly has it hitherto been prepared (with the seeds and cores left to form hard lumps, and the whole, moreover, compressed into a solid mass by hydraulic pressure in order to economise freight, thereby breaking the spring of the fibre and destroying its elasticity) that Ceylon _kapok_ has acquired a bad reputation as compared with the carefully cleaned and lightly packed bales of the same fibre exported from Java.

However, as wise men profit by experience, there seems no reason why one bad start should be allowed to injure this trade. Personally I can speak of the charm of this flossy fibre, having always travelled with a pillow stuffed with some collected and cleaned by myself, with the aid of a pretty Singhalese girl, and certainly no eider-down could excel its softness. But I am bound to confess that the separation of the fibre from the seeds was very tedious work, even with the help of the deft-fingered brown maiden, and it is satisfactory to learn that a ‘cotton gin,’ which is said to answer well, has recently been adapted to this purpose.

It is hoped that some method may also be devised for turning to account the strong fibrous stem, for the plant is so very accommodating that it flourishes almost without cultivation, and at any level, from the sea-coast up to 4,000 or 5,000 feet. In Java its abundance is partly accounted for by the fact that its perfectly straight stems, fifty or sixty feet in height, led to their use in every direction as telegraph posts. These kindly put out roots, and became flourishing trees; at the same time waste lands near the villages had been planted with cuttings or sown with _kapok_ seed to keep up the supply of tall posts, and so Java is now rich in the silky fibre which has become so remunerative.

I grieve that the attempt to describe what is so infinitely varied to the eye must necessarily be somewhat monotonous to the reader, so I must ask each to try in imagination to fill in the picturesque groups of human beings, brightly dressed Tamil or Singhalese men, women, and children, birds and animals, which gave life to every scene.

At the summit of the steep Kadugannawa Pass there is a monument to Captain Dawson, R.E., who had charge of the construction of the original road up the Pass, which, for forty years before the railway was completed, was the only means of access to the mountain districts from the north and west. Captain Dawson died in 1829.

To travellers and other folk to whom time is precious, the railway seems so vast an improvement on ‘the old carriage-road,’ that it is difficult to realise the amazing change which was effected by its creation only about sixty years ago (A.D. 1822). Prior to that time there were only two roads even in the Maritime Provinces, and those so bad as scarcely to be worthy of the name. Along these, travellers were carried in palanquins, with a retinue of heavily-laden baggage coolies. As to the Central Province, it was altogether inaccessible to any but hill-climbers.

Kandy itself, the mountain capital, to which the railway now carries us from Colombo in four hours of luxurious travel (by a route which is one of the great triumphs of railway engineering) could then only be approached with infinite toil by steep, rugged, narrow jungle-paths, in many places dangerous for riders, and quite impossible for vehicles of any description.

By these all stores of every description, whether for peace or war, were carried on the backs of weary men, and the transport of big guns was a matter to tax the ingenuity of the artillery. It was hard enough for the men to drag the guns through deep sand along the coast, but the toil of getting them up mountain passes was indescribable. When Colonel Skinner, R.A. (father of Major Skinner, ‘the road-maker of Ceylon’), had to bring up his battery of heavy guns for the taking of Kandy, the only way in which this could be effected was by ‘parbuckling the guns up from tree to tree!’

The worthy son of this distinguished father commenced his road-making service in this very pass, so I cannot refrain from some reference thereto, especially as I travelled over many and many a mile of his broad highways.

He is one of the noble Britons who have done magnificent work for their country, but who would assuredly have been rejected at the outset had competitive examinations been the passport to enter her service. For in his delightful autobiography[56] Thomas Skinner tells us that when, in A.D. 1818, at the ripe age of fourteen, he was sent out from a quiet vicarage in Dorsetshire to join his father, who was then stationed at Trincomalee, he was as ignorant as a boy of his age could well be, and his father could hardly be persuaded not to send him back to England to school.

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Footnote 56:

‘Fifty Years in Ceylon.’ By Major Thomas Skinner. W. H. Allen & Co.

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Fortunately what proved to be wiser counsels prevailed, and on the recommendation of two naval officers, Sir Robert Brownrigg, the Governor, appointed him to be second lieutenant in the Ceylon Rifles, with orders at once to march detachments of the 19th, 83rd, and Ceylon Rifles across the Isle from Trincomalee to Colombo _viâ_ Kandy, by the difficult jungle-paths, which were then the sole means of crossing the Island.

In the farewell address of the native chiefs to Major Skinner, just fifty years later, their spokesman, Mr. James Alwis, recalled how at that time, when there were no roads in the interior of Ceylon, the march from Colombo to Kandy occupied _about six weeks_, crossing malarious swamps and feverish jungle, toiling up steep ravines, climbing over rocks, or skirting precipices. (Thinking of that journey, now so pleasantly accomplished _in four hours_, my first impression was that the word weeks must surely be a misprint for days; but I am told that this is not the case, the route then followed being so circuitous, and the daily marches necessarily short. After the cart-road was made, the journey was accomplished in five days, which was the average prior to 1867, when the railway was opened.)

As the distance from Kandy to Trincomalee is much greater, Tom Skinner’s first military duty must have been a very serious undertaking, though he accepted it quite as a matter of course, and does not deem it worthy of a comment, beyond remarking that the appearance of such a very small boy, dressed in his schoolboy jacket, at the head of his men, caused some amusement among the officers at Kandy. No wonder that, on his reporting himself at Colombo, his astonished commanding officer could scarcely believe his eyes when he beheld the stripling who had performed this duty.

From that time nothing came amiss to the lad. His very first experience of sport, at a time when he had never even seen a tame elephant, was starting off alone to meet a huge solitary elephant, with remarkably fine tusks. (Barely 4 per cent. of the Ceylon elephants possess tusks at all, and not one in two hundred are of any size.) His terrified sergeant hastened to the rescue, but by extraordinary good fortune the boy shot the giant dead, with a single shot from a flint-and-steel musket, as it was rushing headlong at him—a feat which delighted his men all the more from the magnificent unconcern with which their _tuan kilchel_, ‘little officer,’ treated the whole matter!

Before he had been a year in the island, the lad had passed through more remarkable experiences than befall many men in the course of a lifetime— such as finding himself left in sole charge of troops cut off from all commissariat supplies, and also sole European in a district where small-pox had appeared and was raging (the first time it had visited Ceylon). He organised foraging parties, and established a small-pox hospital under his own care—all with such courtesy and wisdom as won the hearts of all the people.

Happily his superiors, both civil and military, were not slow to note the young officer’s remarkable genius for work. When about sixteen, he was appointed by the Governor, Sir Edward Barnes, to make eleven miles of the great road up the Kadugannawa Pass, by which the hitherto almost inaccessible Kandyan provinces were to be opened up. This was work of which he was totally ignorant. His sole direction was to maintain a gradient of one in twenty, and what that meant he had no idea. So when he found himself among enormous boulders and perpendicular precipices, in charge of two hundred untutored Kandyan villagers, he was at first thoroughly perplexed; but earnest resolution and untiring zeal inspired him with a sort of instinct what to do then, as in many a subsequent difficulty.

The making of that first road forms a very important era in the history of Ceylon. With such energy was its construction carried on, that within twelve months of the date of the order for surveying and tracing it through a densely wooded mountainous country, the first eighty-four miles between Colombo and Kandy was so far completed that the supplies for the troops could be conveyed thither on wheels. Rapidly as these and other roads were surveyed and constructed, more recent engineers have had no fault to find. It was splendid work, well and quickly done.

The men employed were—_first_, a noble force of Pioneers; _secondly_, such of the native troops as could be spared, and who were fit for such work; and _thirdly_, the gratuitous labour of the people, who by their own laws were compelled to render service to the State when required to do so.

This system of _Rajah-Karia_, as it was called, and which under the British was soon abolished, proved invaluable in those early days, when used in moderation by such a Governor as Sir Edward Barnes, whose wisdom and justice were revered by high and low. So greatly was he esteemed that when, seventeen years after he left the Island, a statue of him was erected in Colombo, so many of the natives came from the interior to lay offerings of flowers, rice, and money at the base of the pedestal (as is customary at their shrines), that it was found necessary to surround the statue with a railing to prevent its being treated as an idol!

The Pioneer Corps here referred to is a semi-military force of about 4,000 men of the very best class of Malabar labourers. They were raised by Major Skinner in order that he might always have trained workmen on whom he could rely for steady continuous work in the making of roads, bridges, and canals; and they continue to be kept up as a valuable permanent corps, employed by the Department of Public Works.

During the whole fifty years of Major Skinner’s public service, the story of his life is more interesting than any romance, illustrating, as it does, what could be accomplished by an unassuming man, brimful of pluck, energy, self-reliance, self-help, and quiet determination never to refuse any work that came in his way, and never to fail in anything he undertook, from conquering veteran players at chess to creating a network of first-class roads all over the Isle, discovering and opening up the long-forgotten ruined cities, restoring the ruined canal system of the Maritime Provinces, and finally securing an enormous reduction on the estimates and actual cost of the railway which was to supplant so much of his road work.

With him, to discover a difficulty was the sure preliminary to conquering it; and to such a nature there was keen delight in the knowledge that his work lay either in breaking perfectly new ground, or else in restoring long-neglected works, and this in an island as large as Ireland.

He tells us how invaluable to him in his road-making were the tracks of the herds of wild elephants, so judiciously were they invariably selected, and so well trodden. ‘The top of every ridge,’ he says, ‘had its broad road along which one could drive a carriage, while from range to range one was always sure to find a cross-road which invariably led to the easiest crossing of the river in the valley.’

That preliminary survey and much of his subsequent work involved an amount of exposure, hardship, and actual privation of which the present generation can form no conception. Fever and dysentery were the almost inevitable results of life under such conditions.

For six or seven months in each year he was hard at work, often in most unhealthy, malarious districts, and never under shelter from 4 A.M. till 7 or 8 P.M. And his only tent consisted of five sheets of talipot-palm leaf, stitched together with its own fibre. Each leaf being about six feet by four, three leaves formed two sides and one end, and the other two the roof. Along the top was a small ridge-cap of the same material, and the door always stood open. Within this leaf-tent stood his camp-bed, table, and chair; and as one set of leaves, value a trifle over a shilling, lasted him for a whole season, he reckoned that his quarters were not expensive!

At one time, when he was surveying in the wilderness of the Peak (which was then an unbroken expanse of about 500 square miles of splendid forest), his only food during two months consisted—with the exception of rice and of some wild forest roots—of five miserable chickens, three of which had died from wet and cold on their ascent of the Holy Mount, and so small a quantity of salt fish, that he could only allow himself about one square inch for each meal. He was always a model of temperance in all things, to which he attributed much of his amazing gift of health under most adverse circumstances.

His own account of his life at this time is of such interest to many who would fain emulate his powers as a mountaineer, that I am tempted to quote it in full. He says: ‘On beginning my season’s work I found it necessary to discipline myself as to the amount of liquid I took; and for ten days I suffered terribly, as the exposure to the sun, with the great amount of work I had to go through, caused the most profuse perspirations, and an almost irresistible longing to put my head into every mountain brook I crossed, to quench my burning thirst. I sometimes assuaged it for a time by putting a bit of areca-nut in my mouth, its stringency giving me temporary relief; but by persevering in this course of abstinence for a few days, I found life became more bearable.

‘My allowance of liquid during the day was a small cup of coffee before I started in the morning; breakfast during these two months consisted only of a bit of cake made of rice-flour and water, a biscuit or two, and a cup of cold tea which I carried in a small bottle. In the evening my dinner was boiled rice and a small bit of salt fish, or sometimes some jungle roots made into a curry, a glass of sherry mixed with an equal quantity of water; and after dinner, a cup of coffee with my cigar.

‘All the liquid I took during the day did not exceed one imperial pint; this _régime_ brought me into such splendid working condition, that I could outrun anyone. One very active headman begged me to give him an opportunity of racing me up the cone of Adam’s Peak. We started, and he went off at a great pace, and was out of sight in a few minutes, but three-quarters of a mile was sufficient to blow him. I passed him, and was on the summit forty minutes before him. In like manner I could leave all the athletes of a village behind me.’

His working staff at that time consisted of African soldiers, considered the hardiest men in the British army. He says he often longed for a taste of their savoury meals, but resisted the temptation, fearing lest their provisions might run short. They were on full rations of salt beef or pork, rice, curry stuffs, and arrack, and were allowed two days in camp for each day on field-work with their leader (who was out hard at work every day), yet by the time they reached Nuwara Eliya every man except himself was laid up.

Before the close of the season, however, he suffered severely from sore legs, resulting from poverty of blood, consequent on deficient animal food. But the habit then acquired of limiting his allowance of fluid continued a lasting advantage, as to the end of his life he says he never knew what thirst meant.

This seems a long digression, but seeing how enormously I as a mere traveller have benefited by Major Skinner’s labours, it would be the height of ingratitude not to add my small chirp of thanks to the chorus which is his due.

When he finally left the island in 1867, his fifty years of incessant work was thus summarised in the _Ceylon Observer_ : ‘He has survived to see a magnificent network of roads spread over the country, from the sea-level to the passes of our highest mountain ranges; and instead of dangerous fords and ferries, where property often suffered and life was too frequently sacrificed, he has lived to see every principal stream in Ceylon substantially bridged, or about to be spanned by structures of stone or iron. Whereas before his time there were, strictly speaking, “no roads in the island,” Ceylon, with an area of 25,000 miles, can now count nearly 3,000 miles of made roads, one-fifth of which consist of first-class metalled roads, and another fifth of excellent gravelled highways.‘

Add to all this the restoration of inland navigation—that canal system by which we travelled so pleasantly to Puttalam and Kalpitiya—and the impetus given to many another public work, and we have the bare outline of such a life of unselfish usefulness to his fellow-men as few have been privileged to show.

When we reached the high pass of Kadugannawa, we were on the watershed which divides the tributaries of the Kelani-ganga and Maha-Oya on the west coast from those of the Maha-velli-ganga, which, after a north-easterly course of about 130 miles, enters the sea near Trincomalee.

Descending to Peradeniya Station, we found ourselves on the brink of that broad still river—the Maha-velli-ganga or Great Sandy river—all fringed with beautiful tufts of feathery bamboo. The old road of which I have just spoken crosses the river by a noble bridge entirely built of satin-wood, constructed in 1832 without the use of a single nail or bolt, and still, to all appearance, as sound as ever. It spans the river with a single arch 205 feet wide, which, when the stream is in its normal condition, stands 70 feet above the water, but in time of flood scarcely clears it by 10 feet.

The railway crosses the stream very near the road-bridge, and a five miles’ run would have taken us to Kandy, the mountain capital, 1,600 feet above the sea; but that pleasure was reserved for later, after I had visited Nuwara Eliya, ‘the City of the Open Plain,’ which is the Island sanatorium, and the third Government station—_i.e._ the third place where the Governor has an official residence. So, instead of going north, we turned due south, following the course of the beautiful river to Gampola, which was then the terminus. Now, the railway carries passengers by a much more circuitous route, and easier gradient, right up to Nanu-Oya, which is only five miles from Nuwara Eliya, and 5,600 feet above the sea, a considerable rise in a run of 130 miles from Colombo. Nuwara Eliya itself is 6,222 feet above the sea. So now the admirably engineered road by which we travelled is comparatively forsaken.

VALLEY OF THE MAHAVELLI GANGA.
(Showing the Railway and Satinwood Bridges at Peradeniya, Allegalla
Peak, Terraced Rice Fields.—Foreground, Coffee and a Talipot Palm.)
]

The whole route was beautiful, and to me a delightful novelty was the luxuriance of the fragrant datura with its large white trumpet-shaped blossoms, each 10 or 12 inches in length, of which we think so much if we see a dozen on a greenhouse shrub. Here there were great masses of it growing as freely as our own yellow broom, and 12 or 15 feet in height. Colonists call it the fever-plant, believing that it produces fever, and so object to its growth near houses, or keep it closely trimmed as a garden hedge. What it does produce is a dangerous drug, which occasionally figures in cases of poisoning. In various instances robbers have induced the family cook, or some other person having access to the kitchen, to drop a few pills made of datura-juice into the soup or coffee, and sometimes, to ‘mak sikker,’ into every course, so that no one can escape scot-free.

All along the river the vegetation is a dream of beauty. Tall cocoa, areca, and beautiful kitool palms tower above a rich undergrowth of broad-leaved plantains, ferns, and gay caladiums, or the blue-green of the handsome castor-oil plant,[57] while in some reaches, the gigantic plumes of the ever-graceful bamboo overhang the water. Then perhaps we pass a stretch of vividly green paddy-fields, divided by low terraces of red soil, following every natural curve of the land; so that is never a stiff straight line such as bounds our British fields. And all this, with the reflections in the still river, are only the foreground to a panorama of beautiful hills.

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Footnote 57:

_Palma Christi._

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At Gampola a carriage was waiting to take us up-country, but by some mistake no coolies were forthcoming to carry our baggage, none of which overtook us till the following day! We halted at Pussilawa, and ere night reached ‘The Delta,’ a charming home with a lovely garden, which in that month of March (bleak March in Britain) was fragrant with the mingled perfume of roses and jasmines, gardenias, honeysuckle, heliotropes, salvias, mignonette, violets, lilies and pinks, myrtles, magnolias, oleanders, and loquat; and gay, moreover, with luxuriant convolvuli, fuchsias, and bignonias, brilliantly variegated caladium leaves, fantastic crotons, and beautiful climbing passion-flowers and tacsonias, covered with large crimson stars. Add to these many vividly green parrakeets and other birds of bright plumage, and gay butterflies, and perhaps you can realise something of the charm of that garden.

How enchanting was the peace of the following day, resting on dry green turf beneath the cool shade of large orange-trees, laden with green and golden fruit and fragrant blossom, the grass around us strewn with delicious ripe fruit and snowy petals; while beyond the foreground of luxuriant garden-flowers lay undulating hills all clothed with the glossy green of flourishing coffee estates, right up to Peacock Hill, whose broad blue shadows looked temptingly cool contrasted with the hot haze which veiled the low country we had just left!

In this sweet home we halted for three days to enable the Bishop to hold Sunday services at Pussilawa and meet a number of the planters.

Then once more we took the road, gradually rising up the Kotmalee valley, till we reached the foot of the Rambodda Pass, where we found shelter in a comfortable rest-house. Here the ascent commences in real earnest, the rise in the remaining fourteen miles being 3,000 feet. The road enters the gorge between two picturesque waterfalls, about a hundred feet in height, one on either hand, their cool white spray being a vision of delight in the scorching heat of noon. Oddly enough, in rainy weather, one of these comes down in turbulent red flood, laden with soil from the hills, while the other remains clear and sparkling. One is the Puna-ella, and the other the Garunda ella, and both flow down to join the Maha-velli-ganga. Below the bridge the rocks are curiously water-worn into pot-holes of all sizes, like those in the bed of the Findhorn, which we suppose to be produced by the ceaseless whirling round of shingle.

The road winds up the pass by a succession of steep zigzags at a gradient of about one in fourteen—very trying for the teams of strong handsome white oxen, which drag up large covered bullock-carts, heavily laden with all luxuries and necessaries of life for Nuwara Eliya—or, rather, did so before the completion of the railway to Nanuoya. Formerly this pass was beautifully wooded, and indeed the whole road to Nuwara Eliya lay through dense forest, all of which has long since been felled and burnt to make room for the very monotonous little coffee-bushes, now almost replaced by the equally monotonous tea-bushes. I say ‘almost,’ because, taught by dire experience, wise planters no longer carry all their eggs in one basket, so that the cultivation is varied by that of the very ornamental cacao or chocolate trees and other products.

A little above the head of the pass, at a point where the road winds so as to form a huge letter =S=, stands Pallagolla, a very small bungalow which the Bishop had rented for a couple of months. Here we found Valentine, his excellent Singhalese servant, hard at work making all cosy—a task in which we all lent a hand with some success.

A tiny streamlet flowing through the big family bath assured an ample supply of fresh water, and tempted me out to trace its course. The clear crystal waters glanced so joyously in the bright sunshine as they sped downward to the valley, strewn with snowy petals of fragrant coffee-blossom, that they enticed me farther and farther, till I came to a level patch of tempting green, where the babbling of the stream was hushed; and here, to my delight, I recognised in the luxuriant weed the familiar watercress, dear through association with so many a sparkling stream and quiet pool in the old mother country.

I confess that to me the charm of watercresses has been rudely shaken ever since discovering that those I had gathered in one of the sweetest districts of Perthshire were swarming with minute leeches which could scarcely be dislodged even when soaked in salt and water. But that source of danger had not then suggested itself, so I feasted undismayed, and gathered as many as it was possible to carry back.

Then noting a prominent point from which to obtain a good view of the valley, I made my way thither, and of course found it was much farther and steeper than I had imagined; but once there, the glory of sunset-colouring was such that I was in no hurry to descend, seeing a path near me, and never doubting that it would lead me straight home. This, you see, was my first evening alone in the coffee country, and little did I dream of the labyrinth of zigzag foot-tracks which checkered those steep hillsides.

I soon realised that the path I had struck was leading me quite astray, and the next I tried was evidently no better. The rapid darkness was fast closing in, when to my great joy I espied a light far below me, and, nothing doubting, made that my guiding star. But a few moments later another and another light appeared, and soon glimmering lights surrounded me on every side, a good many seeming stationary, and many more flashing to and fro in a most bewildering manner. (I never now hear the words of ‘Lead, kindly Light,’ without a vivid recollection of that evening, when earth’s many lights proved so perplexing.)

Of course I quickly realised that the flashing lights were fire-beetles, and most of the stationary ones glow-worms, including, however, sundry coolies’ houses, and my own particular beacon. At last I succeeded in reaching a coolie’s house, and hopefully inquired for ‘Pallagolla?’ ‘Bishop’s bungalow?’ without eliciting the faintest glimmer of understanding. I had still to learn that the Tamil coolies have names of their own for every estate, and the names by which they are known to Europeans convey no meaning whatever to them. Happily I very soon afterwards struck the high-road at the head of the big 𝗦, and that little anxiety was at an end.

Two days later I proceeded up the valley to Nuwara Eliya, first on a visit to the Governor,[58] and afterwards to several other friends, so that the pleasant weeks slipped rapidly by ere I returned to this little nest in the coffee.

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Footnote 58:

Sir William Gregory.

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