SIGHTS IN COLOMBO.--RAILWAY JOURNEY TO KANDY.
Colombo consists of two parts, "The Fort" and "The Black Town." The Fort
includes the foreign quarter: the government offices are here, and also
the principal hotels and warehouses, as well as the residences of the
English inhabitants. The Black Town, or Pettah, is made up of a mixed
population, principally natives and half-castes, with a sprinkling of
Moormen, Parsees, and other nationalities more or less uncertain. The
Pettah formerly extended close up to the Fort, but when the Dutch were
about to be attacked by the English, near the end of the last century,
they cleared a space of several hundred yards, and it has remained clear
ever since.
Our friends took a stroll through the Fort and down to the harbor, where
they found a miscellaneous collection of ships from the coasts of India
and Ceylon, and from other parts of the world. The harbor is accessible
only to small vessels of native construction: foreign ships are obliged
to lie farther out, and to land and receive their cargoes and passengers
in lighters and row-boats. When the south-west monsoon is blowing the
surf rolls unpleasantly from the sea, and the operation of landing or
embarking is a serious one for nervous persons. A long pier or
breakwater was begun in 1875, and the authorities promised to have it
completed within ten years from the date of commencement. When finished,
it will afford shelter for large ships, and greatly increase the
importance of Colombo.
Frank asked the Doctor if the place was named for Christopher Columbus,
the great navigator.
"Yes and no," was the answer. "It is called Col-amba in the native
histories as far back as A.D. 496, and an Arabian traveller, in 1344,
speaks of it as 'Kalambu, the finest town in Serendib.' It kept the name
of Kalambu till the arrival of the Portuguese, who changed it to Colombo
in honor of the famous Genoese discoverer of America. There has been a
town or city here for nearly if not quite two thousand years, but it
was never of much importance till the Portuguese, and after them the
Dutch and English, held the island."
In the course of their promenade the boys discovered that the walls of
the Fort were nearly two miles in circuit, and of considerable strength
and thickness. The Doctor told them the Fort was built by the Dutch, and
had been only slightly altered by the English, but there was a prospect
that the most of the walls would be removed in a few years to make way
for new buildings. The Fort stands on a promontory between the sea and a
couple of lakes, and is consequently a place of great natural strength.
The houses are solidly built, the streets are lighted with gas, and
altogether Colombo is far from uncomfortable as a place of residence.
Numbers of peddlers were in the streets, and the corridor of the hotel
was crowded with them. They were of the same character as the itinerant
merchants of Singapore and Point de Galle, and quite as persistent in
offering their wares for sale. The goods were chiefly the products of
India and Ceylon, and included some very pretty shellwork, carvings in
ivory, ebony, and sandal-wood; Indian jewellery, and gems; the most of
the latter being the false gems from Point de Galle. The boys were
attracted by the models of Cingalese boats, and after a good deal of
bargaining they bought one to send home. It was of the outrigger
pattern, very much like those of Galle and the eastern coast, but with
the outrigger larger in proportion to the size of the boat.
[Illustration: A BUSINESS STREET IN THE "BLACK TOWN."]
In the afternoon the Doctor ordered a carriage and went with his young
companions to the Pettah, or Black Town, and into the open country
beyond it. They found that the Black Town was laid out with wide
streets, and had a handsome market-house, under the superintendence of
an Englishman. The fine display of fruits in the market showed how
Colombo is favored by its tropical climate, and the varied lot of fish
told of the wealth of the sea. Frank called the attention of his cousin
to several fishes whose like they had not seen before, and Fred
responded by pointing out some fresh varieties of fruit.
They passed stores and large shops that were kept by men with foreign
features, but with skins quite as dark as those of the natives. The
Doctor said these men were descended from the Portuguese, who were the
first Europeans to settle in Ceylon, and take possession of the country.
Many of them had accumulated large fortunes, and their houses were on a
scale that corresponded to the wealth of the owners. Many of these
houses have fine gardens attached to them, and there are some gardens
that cost many thousands of dollars. The Dutch, who held Ceylon after
the Portuguese, and before the English occupation, have left a good many
descendants in Colombo, and nearly all of them are rich and
correspondingly happy. They spend their lives in Ceylon, and never think
of going to Holland to reside.
[Illustration: MOORISH MERCHANTS OF CEYLON.]
There are a good many half-caste descendants of the Dutch and
Portuguese, and where they are not transacting business on their own
account, they are employed as clerks, either by the Government or by
private individuals. The Parsees and Moormen are all merchants, and of
late years they have been forced into competition with the Chinese, who
have begun to invade Ceylon.
[Illustration: A SUBURBAN SCENE.]
Frank made the following entries in his note-book:
"The Cingalese are said to make good house-servants and artisans, but
they will not do much heavy work. For this purpose men called Tamils are
imported from Southern India, when they do not come here of their own
accord, and recently as many as 100,000 have come to Ceylon in a single
year. They are employed on the coffee and tea plantations, and for all
sorts of heavy work in the towns; they are larger and stronger than the
native Cingalese, and are said to have bad tempers, which get them into
a great many quarrels.
[Illustration: A GROUP OF TAMIL COOLIES.]
"It is funny to see so many varieties of color among the people of
Colombo. The native Cingalese are of a pure brown, or dark olive; the
Malabar negroes are like a piece of charcoal, and the descendants of the
Portuguese are nearly as black as the men from Malabar. They have
European features with black faces, and on the other hand the
descendants of the Dutch settlers are very like the English in the color
of their skins. The Cingalese are slender, and have small feet and
hands; they wear their hair long, and tie it in a knot at the back of
the head, with a tortoise-shell comb to keep it in place. The men have
little beards, or none at all; and when I say that the dress of the
women is much like that of the men, you can readily understand that it
is not easy to pick out the men from the women in a crowd. A couple of
yards of cotton cloth wrapped around the waist is the entire dress of a
man of the lowest class. As you go up in the social scale, you find the
only difference in the dress is that more and better cloth is used for
the 'comboy' or skirt, with the addition of a jacket with a single row
of silver buttons in front. The height at which the comb is stuck in the
hair indicates the caste of the owner, and the quality of the comb
itself has something to do with it.
[Illustration: CINGALESE MEN.]
"You don't have any trouble in distinguishing a Cingalese from a
Moorman or a Parsee, as the dress tells you at a glance. The Cingalese
wear nothing on their heads except their hair and the comb, but the
Moormen cut their hair just as short as possible, and wear little caps
of straw that fit close to the skull. The Parsees have tall caps without
rims, the Malabar natives have no caps at all, and the people of
European descent wear the European dress, with hats of pith or cork.
Sometimes a Cingalese wraps a gay-colored handkerchief around his head;
the women cover themselves with jewellery to an extent that must be
inconvenient. We saw a woman to-day who had rings on all her toes as
well as her fingers; and if her chains, necklaces, bracelets, and
anklets were all solid, they would have weighed many pounds. Poor people
follow the example of the rich--the men by wearing wooden combs, and the
women by decorating themselves with imitation jewellery made out of
sea-shells, carved wood, sharks' teeth, and the like, and they
sometimes wear two or three pounds of glass beads strung into necklaces.
[Illustration: CINGALESE WOMEN.]
"The faces of the Cingalese women are quite pretty, but there are not
many of them that would be called handsome. Doctor Bronson says they are
usually married by the time they are fourteen years of age, and their
husbands are only a year or two older. The marriages are generally
arranged by the parents without consulting the young people: the
ceremony consists in tying the thumbs or little fingers of the couple
together, in the presence of several witnesses, and while they are thus
tied some scented oil is poured over the head of the bride.
[Illustration: A CHEAP COMB.]
"We went outside the Black Town, and made quite a drive among the fields
and forests around Colombo. Our driver took us to see the cinnamon
gardens, which were much larger than those of Point de Galle, as they
covered hundreds of acres, and the trees were kept in much better
condition. There are other trees mixed up in the gardens, such as
cashew, bread-fruit, tamarind, and other tropical growths, and the fine
roads through the place made our ride a pleasant one. The perfume from
the grove was delicious, and we all recalled the words of Bishop Heber
about 'the spicy breezes that blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle.'
[Illustration: CASHEW-NUT.]
"The country back of Colombo has a good many water-courses, some of them
natural and others artificial. There are several lakes, but none of any
great extent, though they are nearly all pretty in consequence of the
rich foliage about them. A river with a sluggish current comes down from
the north, and along its banks there are a great many floating houses,
where the natives live just as they would on shore.
[Illustration: A COOLIE AT PRAYERS.]
"At one place, where we passed a little hut, we saw a coolie standing
outside and pouring water upon a stone, while he repeated some words
which of course we could not understand. We thought he was engaged in
some form of religious worship, and when we asked the driver, he said it
was so. The man was probably a native of India, as this form of saying
prayers is quite common in certain parts of that country."
The party went to bed early in order to have a good night's sleep, and
be ready to start in the morning for the centre of the island. The
express train for Kandy starts at 8 A.M., and consequently it was
necessary to leave the hotel a little past seven. The boys found that
the train was not unlike the one that carried them from Batavia to
Buitenzorg, in Java; it was composed of carriages of three classes, the
same as the Javanese trains, the third-class being occupied entirely by
natives, while the second contained a mixed lot of middle-class natives
and economical Europeans. The fares were six, four, and two rupees
respectively for the different classes, the rupee being worth in round
figures about fifty cents of our money. The distance between Colombo and
Kandy is a little more than seventy-two miles.
It was Fred's turn to keep notes of the journey, and he wrote as
follows:
"As the railway leaves Colombo it plunges into a tropical forest, and we
were constantly surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation we have yet
seen. For the first thirty miles or more the country is flat, and every
little while we dash along the borders of a tiny lake or a marsh full of
aquatic plants, which are sometimes so thick that they crowd each other
uncomfortably. These lakes are said to be the homes of crocodiles, and
certainly they look as though a crocodile might be quite comfortable in
them, and have enough to eat and drink.
[Illustration: THE WILD FOREST.]
"You can hardly imagine how the trees are twisted together, and wound
with creeping-plants that sometimes appear to have strangled them. The
underbrush is very dense, and I am not surprised to be told that you
cannot walk more than half a mile an hour in an unbroken Cingalese
forest, as you must cut your way at nearly every step.
"We saw a few monkeys playing among the trees, but they are not abundant
along the line of the railway, and we must go farther into the interior
if we wish to find monkeys in sufficient number to pay for the trouble
of looking at them. Even then it will not be easy to get at them, as
they can see you long before you see them; and if there is the least
fear that you mean to do them harm, they dart out of sight as fast as
their legs will carry them.
"At Ambepusse station we left the flat country, and began to ascend
among the mountains. Up and up we went very rapidly, winding among the
steep hills, and looking down from crags where the descent was almost
perpendicular for hundreds of feet. If the train had gone from the track
and over the edge in any one of a dozen places, it would have been
dashed to pieces in a few seconds. It reminded us of some of the points
on the Central Pacific Railway in California and Nevada, and especially
of 'Cape Horn,' where the train stopped a few minutes to let us enjoy
the scenery. But there was this difference here, that we had the trees
and plants of the tropics all around us, and the summits of the
mountains were steeper and sharper than the sierras, although they were
not as high.
"A good many travellers have pronounced the railway from Colombo to
Kandy the most picturesque in the world; we are not prepared to agree
with them fully, as there are many railways we have not seen, but we are
sure it would not be easy to find one to surpass it. Doctor Bronson says
the scenery reminds him of that between Philippeville and Constantine in
Algeria, of the Brenner Pass in the Alps, of the Central Pacific
Railway, and of the line from Batavia to Buitenzorg all rolled together;
and he adds that the engineering is of the very best class, and the men
who laid out and built the line deserve a great deal of credit.
"As we left the low country, and ascended among the mountains, we found
that the air became cooler and purer the higher we went. We crossed the
summit of the pass at an elevation of 2000 feet, and then descended 200
feet to Kandy. The scenery on one side of the mountains is about the
same as on the other, and the whole range of hills in the centre of
Ceylon seems to have been shaken up in a very lively way, and then
cooled off just as it was. In whatever way we looked there were hills
and valleys, and the slopes were generally so steep that they would not
be at all easy to climb.
"We went to the Queen's Hotel in Kandy, and thought from its name that
the establishment ought to be a fine one; but we think that if the queen
knew what kind of a hotel is being kept in her name, she would order it
changed: the house is dirty and uncomfortable, and the table the very
perfection of badness. The proprietor says it is difficult to get good
cooks in Kandy, and we believe him, for the ones he has are certainly
very far from being good. In all the rooms there are notices that no
credit can be allowed, and all patrons are expected to settle their
bills before they leave the house. Doctor Bronson asked why these
notices were put up, and they told him that the coffee-planters
frequently come to the hotel and go away without paying their bills, and
a good deal of money had been lost by trusting them.
"Kandy is quite prettily situated among the hills, and it looks as
though a considerable amount of money had been spent on making it
attractive. There is an artificial lake that has a road all around it
where people go for their afternoon drives, and there is a small
mountain just back of the town with a road winding around it, with
shade-trees nearly all the way to protect you from the sun. We took a
stroll there this afternoon, and found it delightful; every few hundred
yards there are seats where you may sit and look at the scenery, and
from some of the points you can look for miles over the lovely valleys
and the hills covered with trees clear up to their summits.
"Kandy is the capital of Ceylon, and it is to this fact that it owes the
great number of charming walks and drives; nearly every road and path
bears the name of Lady Somebody or other, and there are so many of them
that the list becomes tiresome after a while. But if the people whose
names are thus preserved gave the money for making the roads and paths,
I suppose we ought not to complain, as they have added very much to the
attractions of Kandy. The place was favored by nature in supplying it
with an abundance of tropical vegetation, and so there was an
opportunity to spend money to good advantage."