COLOMBO
The native town—St. Thomas’s College—The Fort—The lake—Suburbs—White
ants—Cinnamon Gardens.
About three years slipped away—years into which were crowded all the
marvellous interests of sight-seeing in India and elsewhere, and of a
first return to a wide and very sympathetic home-circle in the old
country. (Probably none save those to whom years have brought home
life’s gravest lesson of many lifelong partings, can fully realise how
greatly the pleasure of wandering in far lands is enhanced by the
certainty of the interest and ever-ready sympathy with which letters
from the wanderer will be welcomed by loving kinsfolk beside their own
firesides, nor how much of the incentive to travel seems to pass away
when strangers fill the once familiar homes.)
So pleasant memories were the earnest of pleasant days to come, when an
invitation from the Bishop of Colombo tempted me to face the wintry seas
in bleak November, hoping possibly to reach Ceylon by Christmas. But a
week of wild storms in the English Channel, and a very narrow escape of
foundering off the Eddystone Rock, resulted in our fine new steamer
barely succeeding in making Plymouth harbour, and her passengers
explored the beauties of Cornwall and Devon till another steamer was
ready to take them on their journey.[9]
-----
Footnote 9:
See ‘Via Cornwall to Egypt.’ By C. F. Gordon Cumming. Published by
Messrs. Chatto & Windus.
-----
This eventful double voyage proved a time of lifelong interest to
several young couples on board, and indeed welded all our ship’s company
into such general harmony and kindliness, that the ‘Hindoo-Othello’
passengers were thenceforward a recognised brotherhood in Ceylon. Some,
I fear, were heavy of heart when the last evening came, and all lingered
late in the starlight, enjoying the delicious scent of jungle-flowers,
which the balmy land-breeze brought us as a greeting from the forests of
Southern India.
I need scarcely say that as we neared the beautiful Isle, some of us
were on deck with the earliest glimmer of dawn, and were rewarded by a
glorious crimson and golden sky, long before the sunrise—a red horizon
against which Adam’s Peak and the lower mountain-ranges stood out sharp
and clear in purple relief, just as plainly as I had previously seen
them from Galle, from which, indeed, the Peak is about equidistant.
Soon after 7 A.M. we anchored in Colombo Roads (for the great breakwater
which has endowed Colombo with her present noble harbour, is a creation
of later date), and very quickly our steamer was surrounded by wonderful
native canoes of all sizes, and boats of heavier build, bringing friends
to meet the new-comers. Soon the Bishop arrived himself, with the
kindest of welcomes for me, and for a pleasant new addition to his
clerical staff, and a few minutes later we were in a big boat, being
rowed ashore by Tamil boatmen, who cheered their toil by singing wild
songs with wilder refrain to the accompaniment of plashing oars,
reminding me of the Gaelic songs of the Skye boatmen.
The Bishop’s carriage awaited us at the landing-place. Here, as in
India, each horse is accompanied by its own horsekeeper, lightly
dressed, and barefooted, but with large scarlet turban and sash, for in
Ceylon these men are all Tamils. Whatever be the distance and whatever
the pace, they pride themselves on running abreast of the horses, ready
to help in any emergency, and shouting to secure a clear way through the
crowded streets.
We had good need of their services, for our way lay through the Pettah,
or native town, thronged by an ever-fascinating kaleidoscope of
infinitely varied human beings, all picturesque, forming a succession of
groups of living bronzes, each a study for an artist. Only, alas! even
the very first close glimpse of these revealed that suffering has a
footing in Paradise, for we saw a van full of semi-nude lunatics from
the asylum taking a morning drive, and several poor creatures with limbs
swollen and distorted with elephantiasis, and (more painful still,
because caused by human callousness, though the charge of deliberate
cruelty is repudiated) we were sickened by the sight of the pretty
little bullocks, drawing the native carts, all alike covered with most
elaborate patterns of curls and curves like intricate Runic knotting,
either branded or cut in narrow strips right into the hide. When the
scars have healed, they produce a result as beautiful in native eyes as
are in their own sight somewhat similar scars on the bodies of various
savage tribes.
But to see the poor beasts who have recently undergone this process,
literally covered with these carefully manufactured raws, in many cases
festering and a prey to clouds of flies, is simply revolting. In defence
of so cruel a practice the owners of the bullocks maintain that not only
is this a preventive of cattle-stealing, but also a safeguard against
rheumatism. It has even been asserted that in some cases animals have
been ‘hide-bound’ and never could be induced to fatten till their hides
had been thus destroyed.
Were it not for this detail, these pretty little zebus, with their
humped neck and deep dewlap, their silky skin and slender limbs, are
very attractive. The majority are black, but many are silvery grey. In
lieu of reins and a bit, a hole is bored through the nostril, and the
poor beasts are guided by a rope passed through the nose. Some are very
fast trotters, and native gentlemen drive them at a rattling pace in
small hackeries. Larger palm-thatched carts or ‘bullock-bandys,’ but
similarly balanced on two wheels, are used for general traffic. We
passed some of these full of women and children, all brown and
black-haired and black-eyed, and all smiling and chattering, and
glittering with jewellery and gay with coloured draperies. The driver of
the bullocks stalks along between them and the cart, tall, brown, and
black-bearded, with little clothing, carrying a cane for the
encouragement of his good cattle. One marvels how these active little
creatures can draw such heavy weights simply by the pressure of the wide
projecting yoke against the hump on their necks. For heavier traffic
larger-humped cattle have been imported from India, and Ceylon itself
supplies a stronger variety of bullocks of a dark-red colour.
Old residents, as a rule, rather dislike having to drive through this or
any other native town, but to me it was always a pleasure, as each
moment revealed some thoroughly Eastern scene; and though the houses are
for the most part dingy and very poor, chiefly built of mud or bamboos,
and roofed with wooden shingles or dry palm-leaves, yet in this
brilliant sunlight they give depths of rich-brown shadow as a background
to many a bit of sparkling colour; and then the fact of their being all
open and revealing all manner of domestic incidents in the home-life of
races so widely different as Moors and Malays, Singhalese and Tamils,
Dutch and Portuguese burghers, is full of interest to a new-comer. Many
of the simple toilets are performed in the open street, especially the
work of the Tamil barber, who squats on his feet facing his victim, who
likewise squats with his head resting on his own knees, while the barber
shaves it till it shines like a billiard-ball. It is so funny to see
quite small boys being thus shaven!
All the shops are likewise open, with their varied goods—piles of brass
lotas, and earthenware chatties, gay cheap cottons, fish of strange form
and vivid colour, beside the familiar whiting, mullet, and soles. One
which we soon learnt to appreciate is the seer-fish, which is rather
like salmon, but with white flesh. Of course the vegetable stalls are
attractive, but especially so the bewildering variety of tempting
fruits, looking only too inviting as laid out in piles on cool, green
banana leaves,—large luscious pine-apples, heaps of very bright-green
ripe oranges, golden mangoes, custard apples, melons, fine gourds and
splendid pumpkins, pumeloes (_i.e._ shaddocks), limes, guavas, bananas,
papaws, lovi-lovis, durians, rambutans, bullocks’-hearts, sour-sops,
sometimes even figs and grapes—why, these alone were an earnest of
Paradise to one who had so recently escaped from a stormy winter in
England! One fruit new to me, and very insinuating, was the rambutan.
When ripe its rough skin changes from green to rich scarlet, and within
lies a ball of cool, pleasant jelly, very refreshing. A hard uneatable
kernel lies in the centre. Another very attractive little fruit, with
most fragrant blossom, was the loquat, which belongs to the medlar
family.
Some of the best shops in the Pettah are kept by Parsees and Moormen,
who retail all manner of European goods; but a really Eastern stall is
that of the money-changer, who sits on his mat amid heaps of copper and
silver coin. So is that of the grain-seller, the chettie from Southern
India, with his large turban and enormous ear-rings. The carrier of
drinking water is also characteristic. So is the earthenware chattie,
painted white and stuck on the roof to attract the glance of the
passer-by, and so lessen the danger of the evil eye.
We passed Buddhist and Hindoo temples and Mohammedan mosques, but the
latter seemed poor and insignificant as compared with those of India,
which remained so vividly impressed on my memory. But presently our
route lay through a grove of beautiful cocoa-palms, beside the blue sea,
and no odious mental comparisons marred the loveliness of that scene.
Our destination was St. Thomas’s College, in Mutwal, the north-eastern
suburb of the city, distant about two miles from the Fort, which is the
great business centre. The College stands in the same compound,[10] or
grounds, as Christ Church Cathedral, which is primarily the chapel of
the college and collegiate school, founded in 1852 by Dr. Chapman, the
first Bishop of Colombo (Ceylon having previously been included in the
see of Madras). It is also, however, the parish church of a large
English and English-speaking community, as also of the Singhalese
Christians in Mutwal.
-----
Footnote 10:
From the Portuguese _campao_, an enclosure.
-----
Between the Cathedral and the College stands the Bishop’s house,[11]
where two large airy rooms were assigned to me, opening on to a wide
pleasant verandah supported by columns, the whole coated with cool white
chunam, and embowered in a luxuriant growth of flowering creepers of all
gorgeous colours—scarlet and crimson, purple, orange, and vivid blue.
Moreover, there were comparatively few days when we were not blessed
with a delicious sea-breeze; and, indeed, though the deep-blue ocean
itself was well-nigh hidden from us by waving palms and great
India-rubber and other trees, we had only to descend a few hundred yards
to find ourselves on its beautiful beach, where, no matter how calm the
day, the great green rollers break in glittering surf on the yellow
sands or dark rocks.
-----
Footnote 11:
This has been given over by the present Bishop to the Warden of the
College.
-----
To a new-comer it is inconceivable that any one could ever weary of such
delicious balmy air and luxuriant vegetation. And yet one home-sick
Briton expressed the thought of many when he told me that he would give
all the lovely tropical scenery for the sight of a good honest
turnip-field, while another only craved for ‘a good healthy shiver.’
St. Thomas’s College receives about 60 boarders, and the collegiate
school has an average daily attendance of about 250 lads and young men,
some of whom are pure Singhalese or Tamil, others are members of burgher
families—_i.e._ descendants of early Dutch or Portuguese colonists—while
a considerable number are half-castes. Almost all the boarders and about
four-fifths of the students are Christians, the proportion in 1890 being
260 Christian and 43 non-Christian pupils. Of the latter, some are
Buddhists and some Hindoos, who accept the inevitable Christian
instruction for the sake of the first-class secular education here
given. A very well-supported cricket club, a workshop with forge and
lathe, and a Natural History Society, are among the details which
suggest the varied interests of boy-life.
A high-class school for girls occupies a pretty bungalow close to the
Cathedral.
Another very important centre of education is the Royal College, which
was founded in 1836 by Sir Robert Horton, for the higher education of
natives of the Isle. In August 1891 its students numbered 331, while
those at St. Thomas’s numbered 333—a state of things highly creditable
to the latter, inasmuch as the former is a Government college, backed by
public revenue. A generous rivalry exists between these two colleges and
those of India, those of Ceylon securing a full share of honours in
regard to English university scholarships and Cambridge local
examinations; so there is no lack of healthy emulation to keep up the
standard of learning.
St. Thomas’s College supplies choristers with very pleasant voices, for
the daily morning and evening choral services in the Cathedral, where
the week-day congregation consists chiefly of young men from the
College, who look delightfully cool in their white jackets and comboys,
the Singhalese lads being readily distinguished by their tortoise-shell
combs.
In connection with the Cathedral is a mission for the training of native
clergy—Tamil and Singhalese—to whom are apportioned various districts of
Colombo, in which they minister to their own fellow-countrymen, and to
the hitherto neglected Portuguese half-castes and other classes.
Certainly no one here can plead lack of opportunity as an excuse for
non-attendance at church services. Besides several Episcopal churches,
there are Roman Catholic, Wesleyan, Presbyterian, Dutch Presbyterian,
Baptist, and sundry other churches and chapels scattered over the town,
and these (in addition to the services for the English-speaking
community) have others in Tamil, Singhalese, and Portuguese, at such
hours as may best suit domestic servants and others.
Notwithstanding his own incessant work, the Bishop most kindly arranged
that I should accompany him on so many beautiful drives in the freshness
of early morning, or the cool of the evening, that I very soon became
tolerably familiar with the immediate neighbourhood and its inhabitants,
feeling daily more attracted towards these gentle Singhalese, who seem
always so quietly happy, always so polite, crossing their arms, and
bowing so courteously, apparently never excited even when marketing—the
fruitful source of Oriental clatter! Even the pretty graceful children
play gently, noisy romping seeming altogether foreign to their nature.
The girls (poor little dears!) are early taught to stay chiefly indoors,
and by twelve years of age they are generally married, and occasionally
are grandmothers before they are thirty! They certainly are a very
comely race, with their slender figure, shapely well-chiselled features,
and splendid dark dreamy eyes.
Their homes seem to be the perfection of village life; each picturesque
bamboo hut, with its thatch of cocoa-nut leaves, wholly concealed from
its neighbours by the richest vegetation, and buried in cool shade of
large-leaved plantains and bread-fruit trees; while above each little
homestead waves the beneficent tree which supplies the family with meat
and drink, and a thousand things besides.
Certainly, clean as these mud and wattle huts are, some fastidious
people might object to the fact that the raised platforms of clay
whereon the villagers lie basking in their happy _dolce far niente_
(enjoying a foretaste of Buddha’s Paradise) are all plastered with
cow-dung, which is said to keep away vermin, and to be less apt to
become muddy in the rains than is a simple clay floor.
Here, beneath the palm thatch, the men spread their palm-leaf mats and
sleep peacefully, wrapped in their white cloth, till sunrise awakens the
birds. Then they bathe in the nearest stream, and wash their long glossy
black hair, and for the next hour or two sit in the sunlight combing and
drying it, and (alas!) renewing its gloss with unfragrant cocoa-nut oil.
Then they carefully twist it into a smooth coil, fasten it with a
circular tortoise-shell comb, and then rest again, perhaps weaving
fanciful ornaments of split palm-leaf to decorate the entrance to the
home, but certainly chewing the inevitable betel-leaf.
Meanwhile their wives are busy with the daily task of preparing curry—no
fiery curry-powder, but a delicious compound of many pleasant
vegetables, seasoned with pepper, turmeric, green ginger, chillies, &c.,
but above all, made fresh and wholly different every morning, and served
with cocoa-nut, prawns, cucumbers, and all manner of other excellent
dainties, served in different dishes, as we serve vegetables, forming
combinations to rejoice the heart of an epicure. The principal glory of
a Singhalese cook lies in the endless variety of his curries; a very
desirable characteristic in a dish which forms a necessary conclusion to
every meal, and on which you soon learn to count as a necessity. Every
man, woman, and child, down to the very smallest, lives on curry and
rice, indeed we had a theory that all domestic animals were fed on it.
‘To eat rice’ is the recognised form of describing every meal, and
wonderful is the amount consumed by each individual.
The practice I have already alluded to, of chewing betel, which is
practised both by Tamils and Singhalese, is most obnoxious to the
spectator, as it is accompanied by continual spitting of dark-red juice,
which gives you the impression that the whole population are in the last
stage of consumption, and that the ground on every side is stained with
blood. It is truly disgusting! and is continually forcing itself on
one’s observation, which must plead my excuse for referring to it again.
The betel-leaf is rather like ivy, but more fleshy and glossy. In it the
people wrap up a mixture of bits of hard areca-nut, and lime of burnt
shells to give pungency. It discolours the mouth for the moment, and an
habitual chewer is betrayed by the deep reddish-orange stain which has
become chronic. Men and women alike seem to delight in this delicacy,
though I never met a European who could endure it. However, it seems to
be a wise instinct which teaches these vegetarians to consume so much
lime, and it is said that the perpetual chewing of betel compensates for
the deficiency of animal diet.
Of course to the passer-by these simple homes derive much of their charm
from their surroundings, for the poorest is always embowered in
sugar-cane, maize, or bananas; and I know no plant which so fully brings
home to one the sense of tropical luxuriance as does each member of this
widespread tribe of bananas and plantains, which contribute so largely
to the food of the human race in all tropical countries. In one year it
grows to a height of about 20 feet, each leaf being from 6 to 8 feet in
length by about 2 in breadth, and each plant bearing perhaps a total of
three hundred fruits in several heavy drooping clusters—green, ripening
to gold—a total of about seventy pounds weight. Each fruit is enfolded
in a thick leathery skin, which comes off at a touch, yielding a sweet
satisfying food of most delicate flavour, of which the bananas sold in
England give a very faint idea. The effort of producing such a mass of
fruit exhausts the generous plant, which then falls, leaving its strong
fibrous stem and leaf-stalks to be turned to account in various ways.
(One variety yields the fibre known as Manilla hemp.) Then new stems
very quickly spring from the old root, and the splendid plant is
renewed.
To the same family belongs the huge fan-shaped ‘Traveller’s Tree,’[12]
often carelessly described as a palm. It bears the same long broad
leaves; but they are stiffly arranged, exactly like a great feather fan,
and instead of bearing nourishing fruit like the common banana,[13] they
collect water, which filters into the tightly plaited sheaths at the
base of the leaves, whence a drink of pure water can always be drawn by
stabbing the said base of a leaf.
-----
Footnote 12:
_Ravenala madagascariensis._
Footnote 13:
_Musa sapientum._
-----
The country all round Colombo is strangely level, and the soil is of a
warm red colour. The red roads contrast curiously with the vividly green
rice-fields and the luxuriant vegetation on every side.
Even the red streets are delightfully shaded by cool green _Suriya_, or
sun-trees, so named on account of their delicate primrose-coloured
blossoms, with claret-coloured heart, which, like the setting sun, turn
red as they fade. (One of the titles of the ancient royal race was
_Suriya-wanzae_, the race of the sun.) The flower curiously resembles
that of the cotton plant, and also in form that of the single scarlet
hibiscus, known to Europeans as the shoe-flower; but its grey-green
leaves are totally different, rather resembling those of a poplar. Hence
Linnæus named this tree _Hibiscus populneus_, but modern botanists have
reclassed it as _Thespesia populnea_. As an everyday name, surely
nothing could be more appropriate than Suriya; but Europeans generally
speak of them as tulip-trees, from a very imaginary resemblance of the
blossom to that familiar but less refined flower. Certainly it is in
every respect unlike the true tulip-tree of North America.[14]
-----
Footnote 14:
_Liriodendron tulipifera._
-----
To me the Suriya recalls pleasant visions of the South Pacific isles,
where it grows abundantly. In Fiji it is called the _Vau_,[15] and is
greatly prized on account of the fibre of the inner bark, which is used
by the fisher-folk for making turtle-nets, and also, when dyed of
various colours, for making fringe-kilts. It is a most cheery little
tree, always covered with sunny blossoms. Here its light hard-grained
wood is prized for carriage-building and for gun-stocks. Like many other
flowering trees which are widely spread over Ceylon, it is doubtful
whether the Suriya is indigenous, though it has been found near
Batticaloa apparently wild.
-----
Footnote 15:
‘At Home in Fiji,’ vol. i. p. 83. By C. F. Gordon Cumming. Published
by W. Blackwood & Sons.
-----
Both Galle and Colombo are indebted to the Dutch for these pleasant
avenues, which transform their busiest business streets into cool
boulevards. The new-comer on first landing derives from them his very
earliest impression of green shade as he passes from the harbour to the
Fort, which is the chief business centre—Queen’s House (as the
Governor’s residence is here called), the Government offices, and the
principal European shops being all within its haunts, which comprise
about two square miles.
The fortifications crown a rocky headland between the sea and the large
lake. On the land side there are four bastions, and gates with
drawbridges, and seven batteries guard the seaward approach. The Fort
was commenced by the Portuguese in A.D. 1518. The Dutch did not appear
on the scene till 1602, and when in 1655 they besieged this Fort, it was
accounted one of the largest and strongest fortresses in the East, the
circuit of its walls being nearly three quarters of a mile, while it was
protected on one side by the sea, and on the other by the lake, which
was then well stocked with man-devouring crocodiles.
So much reliance seems to have been placed on these natural advantages,
that cocoa-palms had actually been planted on the fortifications; and
though these were mounted by 237 cannons, their carriages were literally
rotten from neglect, and in the hour of need had to be renewed with wood
taken from shattered houses, and even from the churches. Moreover, so
many buildings of all sorts were crowded within the walls, that it was
simply a small enclosed town with a population of about 4,000 persons,
of whom only about 1,200 were capable of bearing arms, the majority of
these being half-castes.
On the approach of the Dutch, assisted by the troops of the King of
Kandy, ‘the priests of the seven parishes of Colombo, accompanied by
their terrified flocks, sought shelter from the advancing heretics
within the walls.’ Its population was trebled, and then it was necessary
to close the gates and refuse admission to any more fugitives. Then
followed a prolonged siege, full of thrilling deeds of valour and
hand-to-hand fighting. Probably the whole page of history contains no
record more full of the terrible ‘romance’ of war. Every man within the
Fort was fighting for dear life, for the King of Kandy had stipulated
that every native captured within the Fort should be given over to him,
that he might punish them as he had done those captured at Batticaloa,
on which occasion he had impaled fifty living men, and had sold the rest
with their wives and children to be slaves. This fate likewise befell
such fishermen as were captured attempting to run the blockade and carry
provisions to the besieged. As the siege advanced and provisions became
scarcer, many natives attempted to escape, but all were ruthlessly
driven back with whips, to add to the embarrassment of the besieged. And
yet in the face of such horrors the Portuguese were weakened by internal
strife, when blue-blooded hidalgos occasionally refused to obey the
orders of their half-breed superior officers.
For seven long months the siege continued, all on both sides being on
the alert day and night. It is recorded of the aged Governor that during
all that time he was never seen without his armour. Even the Jesuit
fathers and the Augustines donned armour and defended the ramparts or
fought in the trenches, leaving the care of the sick and wounded to the
Dominicans, Capuchins, and Cordeliers. Their zeal was intensified by a
sacrilegious act of the Dutch, who, having taken an image of St. Thomas
from its altar in a church beside the sea, had cut off its nose, ears,
and arms, driven nails into it, and finally fired it from a mortar into
the Fort. It fell into the ditch, whence it was rescued by the
Portuguese at the peril of their lives, and carried in solemn procession
to a place of honour on the high altar of the Church of the Cordeliers.
At the beginning of the siege there were fifteen elephants and many
buffaloes within the Fort. One of the former was so very valuable as a
catcher of wild elephants (having annually captured about thirty, valued
at fifteen thousand crowns), that, although owing to prolonged drought
there was not a green herb within the Fort, it was somehow kept alive to
the end of the siege, when it became a prize for the Dutch. But every
other living creature, down to cats, rats, and dogs, was devoured, and
wretched living skeletons subsisted on a daily handful of rice, till
pestilence in the form of fever, dysentery, and a disease called
_beri-beri_, of the nature of dropsy, broke out and thinned their ranks.
Soldiers dropped dead on the ramparts from sheer exhaustion, and in one
day 130 bodies were buried, search parties going through the houses to
carry out the dead. This during intense heat, aggravated by months
without a drop of rain. Happily, however, the wells never dried up, and
the besieged were spared the anguish of insufficient water. Nevertheless
the recorded details of anguish during those terrible months are
altogether sickening.
As the position became more and more intolerable many contrived to
desert, though all who were caught were promptly hanged; a considerable
number succeeded in swimming across the lake at night, preferring the
risk of being devoured by crocodiles to the certain torture of
starvation.
In the last extremity of famine, the Portuguese drove out all the
surviving starving natives, and closed the Fort gates after them. The
Dutch refused to let them pass. Thus they were hemmed in between the
belligerents, and the whole party perished either from starvation or
bullet wounds.
In all history there is no more thrilling page than the story of this
siege, with its daily hand-to-hand fights between the gaunt living
skeletons who held the Fort, and their assailants. At last one morning
at daybreak the Dutch carried all the outworks, and only the bastion of
St. John remained between them and the Fort. Of all its defenders there
survived only one brave captain and two boys. These were soon cut down,
and the besiegers having captured the bastion, poured down on the Fort,
supported by a strong body of Singhalese archers. Every man who was not
utterly disabled, including almost all the priests, rushed to the
defence, fighting with the desperation of men in their last extremity.
That handful of brave men, faint from starvation and exhaustion, held
their ground the livelong day against a vastly superior force of
well-fed Dutch and Kandyan troops; the fighting was almost all
hand-to-hand, with swords and pistols and hand-grenades, and continued
till the darkness compelled a truce.
The dead and wounded of both sides lay heaped together in ghastly piles.
Among the slain was the brave Father Antonio Nunes, who early in the day
was struck by a musket-ball, but, still fighting on, presently received
a severe sword-cut. Triumphant over pain, the undaunted warrior-priest
still held his ground, till he was killed by the explosion of a
hand-grenade. But in that force each warrior was a hero.
It was evident that to prolong the struggle was hopeless, so, though
some still voted for no surrender, honourable terms of capitulation were
at last agreed on. The Dutch general undertook to protect all the
inhabitants of the Fort, especially the women, and to care for all the
sick and wounded; also to convey all soldiers and officers to Europe, or
other Portuguese settlements; and on May 12, 1656, the garrison,
consisting of 190 Portuguese soldiers and armed civilians, marched out
with all the honours of war—a ghastly procession of living skeletons,
many of whom were scarcely able to totter on their poor legs, swollen by
_beri-beri_, and almost every man disabled by wounds or burning by
gunpowder. Even the Dutch could not restrain their pity and admiration
of this band of heroes.
The priests, however, fearing with good reason that protection would not
be extended to their sacred relics, images, and consecrated vessels,
hastened to conceal these, and to unfurnish all altars in the churches,
lest they should be profaned by the heretics who had dealt so cruelly
with the image of St. Thomas.
When the Fort had thus been evacuated by its defenders, the Dutch
marched in, and the standard of the Prince of Orange was planted on the
Water Fort, a dearly bought prize, said to have cost the Dutch the lives
of upwards of three thousand soldiers, besides many of their bravest
officers, and an enormous outlay in money. It proved, however, the key
to mastery on the Isle, the Portuguese being soon afterwards compelled
to cede all their possessions.
They held the Fort of Colombo till February 1796, when in their turn
they were besieged by the British, and capitulated after a very much
feebler resistance, with few such thrilling incidents as those which
formed the everyday history of the seven months’ siege.
Finally, in 1869, the walls of the Fort were demolished by its present
masters.
As we have seen, during the Portuguese occupation no less than five
religious orders were established within the Fort—namely, the Jesuits,
Augustines, Dominicans, Cordeliers, and Capuchins, each having its
separate monastery and chapel. Of their hospitals, colleges, and
monasteries no trace remains, but an interesting memorial of that period
was discovered about fifty years ago, when, in carrying out some repairs
near the Battenburgh bastion, a large stone was discovered, with an
inscription stating that beneath it lay the body of Juan Monteiro, the
first primate of Ceylon, who died here A.D. 1536.
The city of Colombo covers a very large area, its various suburbs being
separated by cocoa-palm groves, amongst which the houses of the
wealthier inhabitants stand apart, each in its own large garden; many
are scattered about all through the wide semi-jungle, still known as the
Cinnamon Gardens, and many more are dotted all along the shores of the
freshwater lake, which ramifies in so many directions that one keeps
coming to it again and again, but never too often, for each fresh
glimpse shows some new combination of luxuriant foliage, and most
carefully cultivated flowering trees and shrubs. Some such groups form
memory-pictures of delight—as, for instance, in the months of April and
May, the Flamboyant (_Poinciana regia_), with its indescribably gorgeous
masses of scarlet and golden blossom and delicate velvety green foliage.
Or the splendid drooping clusters, also scarlet and yellow, of the
_Amherstia nobilis_, which blooms all the year, though most glorious
from Christmas to Easter. These relieved by the lovely lemon-yellow of
the ‘lettuce’ tree, which gleams like embodied sunlight, contrasting
with the blue-green of the screw-pine and the dark casurina, or the
feathery misty foliage of clumps of tall graceful bamboo, all in perfect
harmony with the soft pearly grey of the sky, and all reflected in the
still lake.
Here and there are dark hibiscus all aglow with crimson blossom, or long
pendant boughs of poinsettia, with gorgeous scarlet rosettes of young
foliage in wondrous contrast with the rich green of the older leaves,
splendid yellow allamandas, cassias loaded with blossom like our richest
laburnum, ironwood (_Mesua ferrea_) with fragrant large white blossoms
and tufts of young bright crimson foliage, jaggery, areca, talipot, and
date palms, palmyra palms with their great fan-like leaves ceaselessly
rustling with every breath of air, the ever-quivering fronds of the
cocoa-palm glancing in the sunlight, like gleaming swords, and, most
restless of all, the huge leaves of the banana ever waving—the young
leaves like lovely ribbed silk of the most exquisite green, the older
leaves torn by their own ceaseless motion into fluttering yellow
ribbons.
One of these very attractive ‘lake districts’ still bears the unpleasant
name of Slave Island, recalling the days when, under Dutch rule, the
State slaves were there imprisoned every night, a prey to the mosquitos,
which, alas! abound in this warm moist neighbourhood, and but for
skilfully arranged mosquito-nets, effectually murder sleep. Their
hateful note ‘ping’ comes in as a shrill treble to the ceaseless chorus
of multitudinous frogs, some of which are literally seven or eight
inches in length, so it is no wonder that they produce a good deal of
croaking! In colour they are of a rich olive, shading into brown on the
back, and yellow on the under side. Even the pretty little green or
yellowish tree frogs add their sharp shrill cries to the concert.
This labyrinthine lagoon has a special interest in this Isle, which,
strange to say, possesses no natural lakes. Those in the interior are
all of artificial construction, and this is one of that very singular
chain of lagoons (so apparent by a glance at the map) which lie parallel
with the sea along so great a portion of Ceylon, both on the east and
west coast—lagoons formed at the mouth of many rivers by their own
deposit of sand, which thus chokes the original exit, and forces the
stream to meander about in search of a new passage. Thus the beautiful
Kelani river, which now enters the sea at Mutwal, fully three miles to
the north, is believed to have formerly done so here, and to have given
its name to the city, which was originally known as Kalan-totta, ‘the
Kalany Ferry.’ This name was changed by the Moors to Kalambu; and the
Moorish traveller Ibn Batuta, who devoted twenty-eight years to visiting
all sacred Mohammedan shrines, and who in A.D. 1347 came to Ceylon to do
homage to Adam’s Footprint, describes this as ‘the finest and largest
city in Serendib.’ But when the Portuguese established themselves here
in A.D. 1517, they further altered the name in honour of Columbus; hence
its present form.
Happily the charming lake remains, with all its pleasant boating, and a
fine carriage-road winds round each curve of its very irregular
shore-line, forming a delightful drive. The ‘Galle Face’ (the most
delightful of esplanades) lies between its still waters on the one hand,
and on the other, the thundering surf of the Indian Ocean. This, the
‘Routine Row’ of Colombo, derives its name from being the first of the
seventy miles of beautiful driving-road along the sea-coast to Galle. It
is the only mile not embowered in trees, and is a strip of grass-land
too much haunted by burrowing crabs to be absolutely safe riding-ground,
but which nevertheless answers the purpose for the daily evening meeting
(and even for the annual races, as we are reminded by a circular
race-stand in the centre. For these, however, a better site is now
proposed). Carriages drive up and down a broad red road close to the
great green waves.
The fashionable hour for this daily routine is from five to seven, and
as Ceylon is so near the equator that the sun sets all the year round at
about six o’clock, every one gets the full benefit of the ever-changing
sunset glories, and magnificent they sometimes are during the stormy
monsoons. So brief is the twilight that often before seven it is quite
dark, and carriage-lamps must be lighted; but on the other hand,
sometimes after a brief interval, an afterglow commences which lights up
the sky with colours more beautiful than that of the sunset itself. The
actual variation of sunrise and sunset ranges from about 5.45 A.M. in
August to about 6.23 A.M. in February, and from 6.7 P.M. in August to
6.5 P.M. in February. Even at Galle, in the far south of the Isle, the
difference between the longest and shortest days is only forty-one
minutes.
Time is 5 hours, 19 minutes, 28 seconds ahead of Greenwich, so it is
about noon in Colombo when England is only half awake.
Another thing worthy of note is the singularly slight variation in the
tides, the rise and fall of which rarely exceed three feet.
An interesting peculiarity of the coasts of Ceylon is the frequency of
water-spouts as forerunners of the monsoons. They rise from the shallow
lagoons, or from the sea along the coast, taking the form of a rotatory
inverted cone, with a dark umbrella-shaped top of fine spray. Several of
these gently sportive water-whirlwinds are sometimes seen from the shore
in the course of a day, but they never seem to do any damage.
Speaking of variable natural phenomena, I must just mention the weather,
concerning which it seems to me impossible in Ceylon to speak of ‘dry’
or ‘rainy’ seasons as in India, for the rainfall varies so greatly in
different districts, that when one part of the Isle is being parched,
another is being saturated. Sometimes when we were in dry low-country
districts, gasping for cool air, and all the farmers and villagers
craving for rain, our friends in some of the coffee districts were being
nearly drowned by the incessant deluge pitilessly pouring on them day
after day and week after week, threatening to wash all the soil from the
rocky mountain sides, and to float them and their crop right down to the
sea.
Roughly, the south-west monsoon is supposed to commence at Colombo—
_i.e._ on the south-west coast—about the end of April; and the
north-east monsoon (which sweeps the east coast and the north, right up
to Jaffna) is due at the end of October. A small burst, called the
‘little monsoon,’ precedes the full downpouring of the clouds.
It is during the north-east monsoon, which generally includes Christmas,
that the pleasant but very treacherous land wind or ‘along-shore’ wind,
as it is called, prevails, bringing colds and fever and all manner of
evils. Here most emphatically is ‘the wind from the east,’ bad alike for
man and beast. Happily it is limited to the winter months; during the
other nine, Colombo is greatly favoured with westerly sea-breezes.
Due consideration of these general laws will enable a traveller to avoid
the heaviest rainfall on either coast; but as regards the mountain
districts, one might as well calculate on weather in Scotland, for
sometimes while one side of a dividing range is revelling in sunshine,
the other is being deluged.
It is said that whereas the rainfall of Great Britain ranges from a
minimum of 22 inches to a maximum of 70 inches, the minimum in Ceylon is
70, and the maximum exceeds 200 inches. But it all falls in from 100 to
200 days per annum, in the intervals of blazing sunshine.
Just beyond Galle Face lies Colpetty (or, as it is now spelt,
Kollupitiya), one of the most delightful suburbs of Colombo, but all
around the grassy shores of the beautiful lake (and indeed in every
direction) are scattered the pleasant homes of the residents in this
favoured Isle.
The majority of these are all of the bungalow type—_i.e._ only one
storey high, built of stone or brick, and with the roof very
high-pitched, both on account of the heat retained by the tiles and to
throw off heavy rain. Thus much ventilation is secured, as inside,
instead of a ceiling, there is only a tightly stretched white cloth; so
the whole space within the roof is a reservoir for air—an attic wherein
rats and rat-snakes dwell in anything but love, and often a great wobble
and commotion overhead tells of a battle _à outrance_. But that canvas
is the playground for many creatures, whose tiny feet you see running
along. Thatch being prohibited in towns for fear of fire, the majority
of these houses are roofed with round half-tiles, laid alternately so as
to fit into one another and throw off rain.
Every house is surrounded by a wide verandah, supported by a row of
white pillars which in the older bungalows resemble creamy-white marble.
This beautiful polished surface was produced by a preparation of
shell-lime called _chunam_, but I am told that the secret of making it
has been lost. These cool verandahs, which generally extend right round
the bungalow, are at once the main feature and chief luxury of oriental
houses. Furnished with comfortable lounging chairs and light tables,
they become pleasant family sitting-rooms, with all the advantage of
being out of doors, combined with the comfort of being in shadow and
looking out to the bright sunlight through a veil of exquisite foliage
and bright blossoms.
For the gardeners (or their masters) seem to vie one with another who
shall raise the most fairy-like profusion of beautiful flowers. So roof
and pillars are alike overgrown by luxuriant creepers, while hanging
baskets are filled with rare plants, and an endless variety of
bright-leaved caladiums adorn the edge of the verandah. The flowering
creepers are often trained to climb the neighbouring trees, which are
thus festooned with lovely blossoms—blue, crimson, or gold.
The indigenous flame-coloured gloriosa, orange venusta, vanilla,
orchids, begonia, white and yellow jessamine, roses, fuchsias, the vivid
blue clitoria, and a tiny bright-blue convolvulus, strange
pitcher-plants, gorgeous passion-flowers of all colours, and the
delicate lavender blossoms of the Thunbergia, are among the most
abundant beauties of these flower-embowered homes. Here and there a
richer glow of rosy lilac reveals the gay foliage of the Bougainvillea,
garlanding some sober tree with its bright wreaths of delicate leaves.
In short, everything flourishes in this hot, moist atmosphere, and the
mingled perfume of a thousand tropical blossoms is wafted on every
breath of breezy sunshine.
Unfortunately we cannot quite forget that the warm moisture favours
other growths less attractive, of which the most annoying is a delicate
white fungus which rapidly covers all clothes, gloves, boots and shoes,
papers and books, involving ceaseless watchfulness and exposure to the
sun to save them from becoming hopelessly mildewed. In cases where it is
possible to apply it, citronella oil is a useful remedy. Neglected
scissors and knives turn to a mass of rust; and sometimes the mould
fungus even gets into the very grain of the glass covering pictures, so
that it is impossible to remove the opaque stains. As to drawing-paper,
it becomes hopelessly mildewed as soon as it is landed; and the only
possible corrective is to coat the paper with white paint ere commencing
to colour—an unsatisfactory process, but better than revealing
fungus-stars in every direction.
Then, too, the rough coir-matting on the verandahs, and the gravel which
is generally laid close round bungalows, remind us that their primary
object is to keep off snakes, which dislike gliding over rough
substances. Some very prudent people even object to overhanging trees,
by which snakes may possibly climb so as to drop on to the house; but,
as we have seen, the majority ignore this risk for the sake of a
flower-embowered home. Still it does not do to forget that though Ceylon
is Paradise, the serpent still asserts his presence and his power in the
fairest gardens.
Then in house-building another serious foe has to be taken into account—
namely, those stealthiest of aggressors, the white ants, properly called
termites—little soft white creatures about an inch long, which look
quite incapable of doing mischief; and yet no Samson in the house of the
Philistines could work more deadly harm than they when once they
discover some secret means of access to the woodwork of a house.
Carefully keeping out of sight, they work so diligently that in an
incredibly short space of time what seems to be solid rafters will prove
to be mere hollow shells full of powdered wood and cunningly cemented
clay (where they obtain the clay and glue is as great a mystery as is
the silk and web supplying power of silkworms and spiders).
The wood of the palmyra palm and of the ebony-tree are the only
Ceylonese timbers capable of resisting their ravages, and of course the
demand for these is so much greater than the supply, that other wood—
chiefly that of the jak-tree—is largely used in house-building, but
necessitates constant watchfulness. For this reason, wooden posts can
never be sunk in the ground, but must rest on a stone foundation well in
sight; and even then these clever engineers often frustrate this
precaution by constructing very unobtrusive tubular bridges of clay,
through which they mount unseen, and so attack the woodwork at their
leisure.
Fortunately the workers are all wingless; and though the perfect
termites, both male and female, are each endowed with four wings, they
happily do not take an unfair advantage of poor human beings by flying
to new centres of destruction. Indeed the females, or rather the queens,
have enough to do in recruiting the ant-legions, as each is supposed by
the lowest computation to lay 3,000,000 eggs every year!
They seem to set very small value on their wings, which they shed on the
smallest provocation. Sometimes in the evening swarms of these winged
ants, both white and black, fly in at the ever-open doors and windows,
attracted by the lights; and after hovering about for a few moments,
they vanish, leaving their wings behind them. I have seen scores of
wings thus dropped on a dinner-table; and occasionally the bereft owners
drop beside them, looking naked and humble.
Not only the woodwork of a house, but furniture and goods of all sorts,
must be jealously guarded from the attacks of white ants; and any
indication of clay in any crevice calls for immediate inspection.
Legions of black and red ants of various sizes, some quite tiny, others
half an inch in length, also involve constant watchfulness; for while
the former would quickly make such havoc of a whole bookcase, or of a
packing-case full of books, that little of them would be left except the
backs exposed to view, the active little ants are always in search of
something to devour, especially fruit, cakes, and sweetmeats of all
sorts.
As a defensive measure, the legs of beds, tables, pianos, &c., are
raised on glass stands, or set in jars full of water, while empty black
bottles laid in rows on the matting afford a tolerably secure foundation
for packing-cases and luggage of all sorts.
Provided they can be kept from poaching, the black and red ants are
invaluable scavengers, as they are for ever seeking what they may
devour; and as there are upwards of seventy different species of ants in
Ceylon, their collective efforts in this direction are not to be
despised. Not only do they bodily carry off the corpses of any
cockroaches, beetles, or tiny lizards which they happen to find about
the house, but in the case of larger creatures, whose skeletons it may
be desirable to preserve, such as snakes or small birds, it is enough to
leave them secure from crows and such awkward dissectors,—the ants may
safely be trusted to pick them faultlessly clean, and ready for
exhibition in any museum. It is, however, needless to add, that if
plumage is to be preserved, or butterflies, the ants, so far from being
benefactors, are transformed into an army of myriad foes, from whom it
will tax a collector’s utmost ingenuity to defend his treasures.
But the red ants must be forgiven many indiscretions in consideration of
the vigorous war which they wage against the altogether destructive
white ants. Any one who likes can see this for himself by breaking open
a corner of one of the innumerable white ants’ castles which abound in
the Cinnamon Gardens and elsewhere—anthills perhaps six feet high of
most intricate internal construction, divided into separate
compartments, and these into cells, all connected by passages, and all
built of the finest clay, which the creatures can only obtain by
excavating it from beneath the layer of white quartz sand which covers
the ground to a depth of several inches.
By removing a corner of the roof, you not only may watch these busy
masons hard at work, but the chances are that in a very few moments some
wandering red ant will discover the breach in the enemy’s fortress, and
forthwith he will summon a whole regiment of small but most energetic
red warriors, who will commence a furious onslaught on the hapless soft
white masons, and then rapidly retire, carrying with them the corpses of
the slain. So you see the red ants are man’s useful allies. (In seasons
of scarcity the ant-legions in the arid districts of Manaar are still
more valuable as involuntary foragers. The Tamil villagers dig into
their nests and rob them of all their store of divers seeds.)
The aforesaid Cinnamon Gardens form one of the most popular suburbs of
Colombo, a considerable part having been sold by Government as building
lots, and purchased by wealthy individuals, who have here built
luxurious homes nestling in beautiful gardens. It has, however, the
disadvantage of being somewhat remote from the sea, and so losing the
freshness of the breeze, and being left a prey to armies of mosquitos.
But it is a very favourite evening drive, the grounds being intersected
by miles of good carriage-roads.
Of course the prevalence of one shrub implies monotony, and the
multitudinous great ant-hills to which I have alluded are a fair
indication of the general neglect which has suffered these once
jealously guarded gardens to degenerate into a tangled jungle, rather
suggestive of a neglected shrubbery of Portugal laurels, glorified by
the natural growth of many flowering plants and a profusion of climbing
vines, especially a large white convolvulus, which blooms only at night,
and hence is commonly called ‘the moon-flower.’ The red and yellow
blossoms of the Lantana, the lilac Osbekia, a white flower like
scentless jessamine, rose-coloured periwinkles, and quaint
pitcher-plants, are among the many uncultivated plants; and there are
also a number of large trees, which were originally planted for the sake
of their shade.
The aromatic cinnamon laurel itself, when left to follow its natural
will, grows to a height of about forty feet, but when under cultivation
it is kept pruned to about fifteen feet. As is the case with many
Ceylonese trees, its young foliage is scarlet, and gradually changes to
a dark glossy green, so that in the distance you would fancy these young
scarlet tips were blossoms. The latter are insignificant, of a dingy
white, with pale yellow inside, and have rather an unpleasant smell.
They flower in January, and by May have developed into small
purplish-brown berries, each provided with a cup like that of the acorn.
These berries, when bruised and boiled with the young shoots, yield a
fragrant oil, with which the wealthier natives anoint their hair, and,
like all brown races, some follow their daily ablutions with a little
polish of oil, just to make them of a cheerful countenance. This
cinnamon oil is sometimes mixed with cocoa-nut oil, and burns with a
most brilliant light. From this oil a thick white wax can be prepared,
which used to be in great request for the manufacture of the tapers
burnt in Buddhist temples, and also, under Portuguese rule, for making
candles for the Roman Catholic altars. But so small is the amount of wax
obtained from a very large quantity of berries, that the manufacture
could never be a paying industry, and so it has fallen into disuse, and
the crop of purple berries serves to fatten flocks of turtle and
cinnamon doves, whose soft cooing is heard on every side.
Oil of camphor can be distilled from the roots of the cinnamon laurel.
An oil is also extracted from the leaves, which is sold under the name
of clove oil. The leaves when crushed in the hand have a certain
aromatic fragrance like that of cloves, but as to ‘spicy breezes,’ there
is no more smell of cinnamon here than in a hazel copse in Britain. That
is not perceptible till you break a twig, or till the poor young shoots
have been flayed and the inner bark is ready for export.
The cultivation is something like that of a willow copse, straight young
shoots springing up round the stump of the plant previously cut. These
in their turn are cut about every second year—that is to say, when they
are about five feet high and about two inches in circumference. A good
many of these are sold as walking-sticks, and find a ready market on
board the steamers among the passengers, who think there must be a
special charm in a cinnamon stick, though in truth it is hard to
distinguish it from our own common hazel.
But of course the real thing to be secured is the highly aromatic inner
bark. So first of all the leaves are stripped off, and then the bark is
slit from end to end with a sharp knife, which has a curved point; with
this, aided by fingers, the bark is carefully removed in long pieces.
These are heaped up and left to sodden, so as to facilitate the next
process—namely, that of scraping off the outer rind. In order to do
this, each piece is placed on a round piece of wood and carefully
scraped with the knife, the almost nude brown workers sitting on the
ground and using their toes as an extra hand to steady the end of the
stick. The bark is then left to dry in the sun, when it rolls itself up
into tight quills. These are then neatly sorted and packed, three or
four inside of one another, and are made up into bales covered with
cloth, and are then ready for export. Broken quills are either sold as
chips or reserved for the distiller, who thence extracts oil of
cinnamon, having first crushed and pounded the bark, and then soaked it
in sea-water for a couple of days. The oil thus obtained is of a rich
yellow or red colour.
Cinnamon is so singularly sensitive that great care has to be taken with
regard to its surroundings on board ship, as a bale of very fine
cinnamon will lose much of its delicate aroma if packed among bales of
coarser bark. Various expedients have been tried to remedy this. The
Portuguese and Dutch isolated the bales by packing them in cocoa-nut
fibre, or in cattle-hides; but it is found that the only real safeguard
is to pack bags of pepper between the bales.
Alas! in Ceylon as in some other countries, intending purchasers have
need to guard against possible fraud in their investment, for it is said
that certain native dealers have attained amazing skill in the
substitution of other worthless barks, notably that of guava, which,
after being duly prepared, is left for some hours to soak in the
strongly scented water left after the distillation of cinnamon oil. This
imparts the requisite sweet taste, and then a touch from a cloth dipped
in cheap cinnamon oil completes the deception. Quills of either this
prepared guava bark, or of coarse jungle cinnamon, are neatly packed
inside good quills, and then only an adept can detect the fraud.
Strange indeed it is, looking at this jungle of neglected plants, with
their glossy scarlet and green foliage, to think how enormous is the
influence they have exerted on the fortunes of this Isle—an influence
literally of life and death; for so resolute were the Dutch in
maintaining their monopoly of this precious spice, that in A.D. 1659 a
law was enacted assigning death as the penalty of buying or selling the
wild jungle cinnamon, which was the only sort then known.
A few years later the same penalty was attached to stealing the precious
bark, to giving or receiving it, or to distilling camphor from the roots
of the tree. The least injury to a cinnamon plant, wherever found, was
punished by flogging, and when these Government Gardens had been
established, the destruction of a plant in these involved certain death.
But even supposing a cinnamon shrub to grow by chance on a man’s private
ground, Dutch law declared all such to be the property of the State; no
one save the authorised peelers dared to touch it under severe
penalties, and if the proprietor, anxious to keep his land to himself,
and safe from State trespassers, dared to cut it down, he was liable to
capital punishment!
It is difficult to understand how such laws could have been possible,
seeing that wild cinnamon grew so abundantly throughout the
south-western provinces, and in the Kandyan forests, and even on the
east coast near Batticaloa, that there seems every reason to believe it
to have been indigenous. The same inference is drawn from finding it
described in an ancient Sanskrit catalogue of plants as Singhalem, or
‘belonging to Ceylon.’
On the other hand, it is certainly singular, if this was the case, that
in enumerating the precious products of Ceylon in medieval ages, when
cinnamon was so greatly prized, it is never once mentioned by any writer
prior to Nicola de Conti, who in A.D. 1444 speaks of it as growing here.
This certainly seems to give reason to the argument of those who
maintain that it was imported from Africa—probably from Cape Guardafui—
to the south-western districts, where (like the Lantana in our own days)
it rapidly became acclimatised, its seeds being carried by birds to more
remote inland districts. Hence perhaps the reason for the Dutch law
against shooting crows.
Certain it is that when the Portuguese arrived here in the middle of the
fifteenth century, cinnamon was the one object desired, and the
selection of Colombo with only an open roadstead, to be the headquarters
of trade, in preference to Trincomalee with its magnificent natural
harbour, could only have been due to the fact of its being the natural
centre of the cinnamon region, and near to Cotta, the residence of the
Singhalese king, by whose favour alone could the precious bark be
obtained.
Finding that cinnamon was the one item desired by those foreign traders,
the king required the low-caste Chaliyas, who were weavers, to pay him a
heavy tribute in prepared bark; so (at the proper peeling season, in
May, after the rains have softened the bark) they had to leave their
looms and enter the forests in search for cinnamon—no sinecure in those
days, when wild beasts abounded, and when no less savage Kandyans were
on the alert to harass their low-country neighbours, sometimes cutting
down the cinnamon trees in order to annoy the foreigners.
The Kandyan king himself, however, was open to trade, and in exchange
for salt and Indian cloths, sent large consignments of mountain
cinnamon, much of which was too acrid for exportation. The Portuguese
seem to have sent out military escorts from their various forts to guard
the Chaliyas in their arduous work of collecting the _Maha badda_ or
great tax; and the _Capitan de Canela’_, or chief of the
cinnamon-peelers, was treated both by the Portuguese and afterwards by
the Dutch with much honour.
Nevertheless these Chaliyas cannot have had a very happy time of it,
judging from the law enacted forbidding them to make any complaints to
the governor, except through the superintendent of the cinnamon
plantations, on pain of being put in chains for three years. We may
infer that complaints were not frequent, and that the art of ‘grinning
and bearing’ was brought to great perfection.
Under the Portuguese rule, the collecting thereof seems to have gone on
fairly enough. Though their barbarous cruelties in war were almost
beyond belief, it was reserved for the Dutch to make such laws as I have
just quoted, in order to secure a monopoly in trade. Amongst these was
the enactment of a fine of a thousand guilders for each plant of
cinnamon or any other spice exported from the Isle to India or Europe.
This was evaded by the Dutch themselves, who surreptitiously exported
seeds, and it is said plants also, to Java, and there established
flourishing plantations.
But from the end of the fifteenth century till the middle of the
nineteenth, the cinnamon of Ceylon stood unrivalled, and the Isle
supplied almost all the spice used in Europe. Its price was kept up both
by the Portuguese and Dutch, by occasional bonfires of surplus stock, so
that there might be no glut in the market, such as has in modern days of
free trade caused such fluctuations in its price. In the days of the
monopoly, when the export was restricted to 8,000 bales of 100 lb. each,
the price in the European market for cinnamon of the finest quality was
twelve shillings per lb.; and between A.D. 1753 and 1787 the price rose
to seventeen shillings and eight-pence. Now, when about 12,000 bales are
annually shipped, one shilling per pound is the highest price that can
be obtained for the best bark.
In the first place, the high price of cinnamon led to the extensive use
of cassia, which is largely exported from China and India, and which,
though coarser and more pungent, strongly resembles cinnamon. Then when
Java, Tillicherry, Madras, Guiana, Martinique, and Mauritius all
succeeded in growing cinnamon, the market was flooded with such coarse
bark, selling at such low prices, that cassia was in its turn almost
driven from the field. It still, however, holds its ground in the
manufacture of chocolate for Russia and Turkey, Mexico and Germany,
where its pungent flavour is preferred to the more delicate cinnamon.
But in the manufacture of incense for Greek and Roman Catholic churches
and heathen temples, for medicinal purposes and domestic use, and also
in the preparation of ‘Thorley’s Food for Cattle,’ cinnamon is largely
used.
To return to the ‘Cinnamon Gardens,’ whence I started on this long
digression: these and similar plantations were started by the Dutch only
in the last century, in order to be independent of the supplies
collected in the jungles in the interior of the Isle. They were
established all along the south-west coast, wherever there was a fort to
protect them, beginning at Matara and Galle in the south, and extending
as far north as Negombo and Chilaw. Some were on a very large scale,
this one at Colombo (Marandhan) covering 3,824 acres, while that at
Negombo covered 5,137 acres.
They seem to have been simply tracts of the great jungle in which wild
cinnamon grew in dense profusion, more especially between Negombo and
Chilaw. Apparently the work of the Dutch State gardeners was simply to
clear the land of other jungle shrubs, fill up the vacancies with
cinnamon seedlings, and drain the ground. Nature supplied the moist heat
which is the first essential of cinnamon culture, and the shrub grows
well even on poor soil. Nevertheless, it responds generously to more
hospitable treatment, and it is said that when portions of the Cinnamon
Gardens were purchased by private individuals, some who fed their land
with rich manure reaped a sevenfold harvest—in other words, they
gathered 350 lb. of bark to the acre, on land which had previously
yielded 50 lb.
The natural soil of these gardens is very peculiar. The whole surface is
of the very finest snow-white quartz sand; this, however, is only a
layer a few inches deep, covering a grey sand, beneath which lies a
stratum almost entirely composed of sea-shells, so that the roots of the
trees do strike nourishing soil. Such is the longevity of the cinnamon
laurel that many of the trees, which must be fully a hundred years old,
are still in full vigour.
When the British obtained possession of Ceylon, Government of course
succeeded to the monopoly, which was retained till 1832, when it was
abandoned, and the trade in cinnamon thrown open to all merchants on
payment of an export duty of three shillings a pound. The Government
Cinnamon Department, however, retained its staff of highly paid English
officials and numerous native officials, together with hundreds of
peelers, sorters, &c., till 1840, when, on the representation of the
merchants of the impossibility of their trading against such
competition, the Government connection with the trade was altogether
severed, and the export duty lowered to one shilling per pound. Five
years later this final tax was also removed, but by this time the
substitution of cassia and coarser cinnamon from other places had so
lowered the market that it has never since recovered.
So the Government Gardens were sold at very low prices to private
individuals, and these at Colombo were reserved to be disposed of in
building lots, as purchasers could be found. A plot has recently been
assigned to the Parsees for the erection of a ‘Tower of Silence’ for the
disposal of their dead.
Speaking of the cinnamon laurel and of the rigorous Dutch laws
concerning it, reminds me of another very attractive member of the
laurel family—namely, the spicy nutmeg-tree (_Myristica fragrans_). As
the Dutch resolved that Ceylon should monopolise the trade of the whole
world in cinnamon and pepper, so they assigned to the Moluccas the
exclusive right to grow nutmeg and cloves. Quite pathetic stories are
told of the manner in which certain tender young trees which found their
way into gardens in Ceylon were ruthlessly cut, and their owners haled
to prison.
Happily under English rule the nutmeg-tree has fared better, having been
formally introduced by Mr. Anstruther in 1838, so now it flourishes
without fear, and its fruit is perhaps the prettiest that grows. At
first sight it resembles a round golden-yellow pear, hanging beneath its
glossy green leaves, but when fully ripe this golden fruit divides and
reveals a ball of yellowish-scarlet mace closely wrapped round a thin
shining brown shell, within which lies the familiar nutmeg. The yellow
outer flesh makes an excellent preserve. A favourite colonial story
tells of an imperative order from Britain to grow more mace and fewer
nutmegs!