Old Ceylon, sketches of Ceylon life in the olden time:
SiisS^S^S^S^^SS^iSiSSi^SSK^S^ isssssSsSsS f 'I ■ ■ > \ • < ^I^^^^^^^^H ' « 4" t '' THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE VALE OF DUM3ERA.. OLD CEYLON, SKETCHES OF CEYLON LIFE IN THE OLDEN TIME : BY JOHN CAPPER, AUTHOR OF THE "THREE PRESIDENCIES OF INDIA," THE "gold fields," &C., &C. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY CEYLON ARTISTS. Colombo : CEYLON TIMES PRESS 1877. COLOMBO: PRINTED BY THE CE7L0N TIMES PRESS COMPANY, LIMITED. DS C ' ° *^^ANY of the following Sketches were published in the early volumes of Dicke2^s' " Household Words," more than a quarter of a century ago. Some are now given for the first time, but nearly all refer to a period between thirty and forty years ago. In the hope that these pictures of " Old Ceylon " may be acceptable to some of those who take an interest in our beautiful island , they are now brought together, so that the memory of bye-gone times may not pass away for ever. Colombo, September, 1878. IK.iM^rH CONTENTS. The Garden of Flowers fBlustratedJ Our Cook's Wedding Coffee Planting in the Olden Time Dutch Colombo (BlustratedJ Our Old Clerk A Galle Legend A Peep at the " Perahera " Old English Colombo (lUustrated) " Old Joe " Phillip of Brassfounder Street The Fine Old Native Gentleman (Illustrated) HuLFSDORP (Illustrated) The Cinnamon Peeler Elephants and How to Catch Them A Happy Valley (Illustrated) Our Produce Dealer Number Forty- two (Illustrated) Our Coffee Mills A New Year's Day (Elustrated) Our National Tree. The Kandyan's Captive My Pearl Fishing Expedition (Illustrated^ PAGE, 1 17 31 45 52 57 72 82 87 92 102 108 120 125 140 147 154 162 174 183 194 201 ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGK, FRONTISPIECE The Vale of Dumbera. Little Dochie . . . .11 Dancing the " Caffreina " . . . 50 The Old Tinker . . . .84 Reception of the Governor by the Maha Mudeliyar 105 The Courts at HuLFSDORP . . .113 A Happy Valley . . . .141 Number Forty-two . . , .155 Fishing Boats Making for Shore . .176 Returning from the Pearl Banks . . 202 THE GARDEN OF FLOWERS. n?HE Coffee Estate on "which I resided was situated in one of t> the wildest and most beautiful districts of the island of Ceylon, elevated far above the lixxuriant lowlands, where fra- grant spices and waving palms told of wide plains and balmy- winds. The plantation was on a broad table-land, fully three thousand five hundred feet above the sea level, many miles removed from the only European town in the interior, and at least five miles from any other white man's dwelling. Within a short walk of the lower boundary of my property, was a small Kandyan village containing within itself the very pith and es- sence of Cingalese society, a true type of the native community of the interior. As I mixed so unreservedly and frequently with the people, and saw so much of their every-day-life, it may be interesting to give a faint outline of this little hamlet. Malwattie, which was its name, signifies literally, a " gar- den of flowers," and such in truth it was, when^I first visited it. Unlike any European village, there was not such a thing as a row of houses or huts to be seen : shops were unknown in that primi- tive place, and until later years, no such incubus as a taver^ keeper or renter was known there. Every little hut or cottage was carefully shaded from the view of its neighbour, fairly established on its own account, as much so, as though the in- mates had written up in barbarous Cingalese characters, " No connexion with the house next door." I never could learn that there was any superstition among native hut builders, as to the variation in the aspect of their domiciles, but certain it was that no two dwellings faced precisely the same points of the compass. One would be north-east, and the nearest to it would be north-east and by oast : you might fancy you had found another facing a similar point, but on careful observa- tion you would see that you could not make it any better than north-east-and-by-east-half-east. I tried the experiment for a long time, but was compelled at length, to give it up, I had regularly " boxed the compass" round the entire village, but in vain. Partly from long' established custom, and partly from a desire of shading their dwellings from the heat of the sun, the Kandyans bury their isolated huts beneath a dense mass of the rankest vegetation. At a short distance not a sign of human habitation could be traced, were it not for the thickly growing tops of bananas, areka palms, and bread-fruit trees, which are ever found around and above their quiet abodes. Malwattie formed no exception to the general rule in this respect ; it was as snugly hedged, and fenced, and grown over, as was Robinson Crusoe's dwelling after the visit of the sava- ges. Every tiny hut appeared to possess a maze of its own for the express purpose of perplexing all new-comers, especially white men. The entire village did not cover more than an eighth of a square mile, yet it would have puzzled any living thing but a bird to have visited all the cottages in less time than half a day, and very giddy, trying work it would have been. Small as was this primitive community, it had its superiors. The leading men were the priest ef the little Buddhist Vihara, or shrine ; and the Korale or headman. I will not distress the reader by putting the names of these men in print, as they would be perfectly unpronounceable, and moreover, as lengthy as the approaches to their own dwellings. The entire names of one Cingalese community would fill a small sized volume. I will therefore, only speak of these persons as the Priest and the Korale. The latter was a rather respectable man, as things go in Ceylon ; he was negatively irreproachable in character. He had certainly never committed murder or theft on the Queen's highway. Perjury had not been charged against him, and as for the faithful discharge of his few official duties, no one had ever called that in question, though there were some rather curious tales afloat on the subject of the last assessment on rice lands. At the office of the Government Agent of the dis- trict he was believed to be as active and honest as nine-tenths of the native headmen, though to be sure that was not saying very much for him. The villagers looked up to him with the utmost veneration and respect, and no wonder, for on his fiat depended the amount of rice tax their lands were to pay. He was a venerable looking old gentleman, with a flowing white beard, a keen, quiet eye, and an easy-going habit that might have been called dignity or lazyness. It was his duty to render to the Government officers a just account of the industry, if such a term can be applied to any Cingalese, of his village ; to furnish returns of the increase or decrease of the population ; to give notice of all crimes and offences committed ; and in short to represent the local government in minor details. For all this, no salary was paid him. He was satisfied with the honor of the office ; and yet, strange to tell, this Korale had so far increased his property by gaining nothing, that he was a man of some substance when I left the place, owning some hundreds of cattle and rich in pasture lands. Education was unknown to him ; he could scratch a little Cingalese on the dried leaves used in place of paper, and I believe could count as far as ten. His most complicated accounts were all on a decimal system, and by the aid of numerous symbols known but to himself and the erudition of the friendly priest, he contrived to trans- act a multitude of business with the authorities. The abode of this old patriarch would have furnished a study for a lover of the antique. Everything seemed in keeping with his long white board. The doors and windows, the couches and three-legged table, all were hoary with years. Even the atmosphere had a musty smell about it, as though it had boon keeping him company ever since he was a little boy. In the midst of thick foHage, as bright and green as the cottage was dark and cankery, it seemed at a distance, like a huo-e wart on the rich vegetation. The coffee, the bananas, the cotton, the jambo, the pau-pau grew in wild profusion. Of what we should call garden, he had none, nor did he need any, for the friendly villagers kept his daily wants amply supplied from their own poor scanty patches. At early dawn the little narrow pathway leading circuitously to his door, might be seen tracked by men, women and children, laden with fruit, vege- tables, and eggs for the Korale's larder ; he might well grow stout and glossy and contented with his lot. There was such a supply of vegetable diet introduced through his crazy old doorway each morning, as might have fully satisfied the vegetarians of Great Britain, with something to spare for the pigs. But the old gentleman disposed of it all ; for he had a little colony of feudal dependants hanging about his heels behind his own barn of a place. These serfs tracked him wherever he went ; one held a paper umbrella or a talipot leaf over him in his walks : another carried his stick of office : one beat off the musquitoes ; another fanned him to sleep with a punkah. In short they did everything for him, save eat and sleep, and these functions he performed for himseK to perfection. The old Korale was generally pleased with my visits, for they added to his importance in the eyes of the little commu- nity. He lived quite alone ; his wife had been dead some years, and he had lost his only child by fever. His days were mostly passed in sleeping, smoking and eating, varied occasionally with a stroll round his rice fields, or those of his neighbours. It was seldom that he visited Kandy, the ancient capital : as for Colombo, the wildest freaks of imagination would never induce him to contemplate a journey so far from his domestic hearth. It was a curious sight to behold this ancient being leading such a hedgo-hog existence : rolling himself up in indolence, after every meal of rice and curry, in his little darkened, cavern-like verandah ; and there, if no gnest arrived, falling asleep until the next meal aroused him from his torpor, I have found him thus, clad in semi-barbaric pomp, reeking with dirt, and swelled with importance in a baloon-shaped Kandyan hat, a flowing robe and loose jacket with shoulder-of-mutton sleeves, secured by silver bangles ; an enormous mass of white muslin wrapped, fold upon fold, around his waist. A petty little mountain stream fell trickling and bubbling past the door, over stones and sticks, and flowers and herbs, until it was lost in the rice fields below, playing and gambolling as though each tiny wave had been some frolicsome wood nymph. Little could be seen from that shady portal, and not much more heard, beyond the hum of myriad insects and the distant cry of jungle birds. Often have I sat with the Korale chatting on local and other matters, for he was a man of gossip though of limited ideas. I tried in vain to make him understand the position and importance of other countries : of their great superiority to the Kandyans, and of the features which distinguished us. people of the west from orientals. He conld not be persuaded that Europe was larger or a better place than Ceylon ; that better corn and vegetables were grown in England, than on the Kandyan hills ; or that a modern drawing-room was a more comfortable sort of place than a Cing-alese Korale 's recep- tion room, with earthen floor and leafy ceiling. Of some description of politics he had gleaned a faint idea from the reported contents of one of the local newspapers very demo- cratic in its principles. He had an inkling that things were not going on as they should do, and that a republic must be the sort of government suited to the present wants of man, yet strange to say he connected with his ideas of reform, a return to those things which the liberality of the British Government had abolished, forced labour and flogging at the discretion of the headmen ! The priest was of a far different stamp, not an educated man in any European sense of the word ; but still with some glimmering of mind within, just serving to render internal darkness visible. He of course, could read fluently ; for it was a portion of his duties to recite verses of their Pitakas or sacred writings, morning and evening in the Vihara. He possessed a fair share of curiosity, and a desire to know something of other places and things. Nay, more, he frequently heard me read a whole chapter of the Scriptures, with which he was much pleased and frankly admitted that Christianity was the best religion next to Buddhism. His Vihara and dwelling were at one end of the range of little hills, on the slopes of which the village of Malwattie was situated, though above them considerably. It was the only roof covered by tiles ; and, unlike the rest, might be seen at some distance peeping out from amidst a dense mass of foliage. To arrive at it the traveller had to wind his way along a weary length of loose stones that led over low swampy ground, round the edges of rice fields and up the sides of rather steep hills — a slip from which bid fair to plunge the wayfarer down some very ugly places. It was a path that should be trodden by none but a tight-rope dancer, or a native of the country. The view from the door of the shrine was highly pictures- que, commanding a survey of many miles of mountain, forest and prairie country, through which herds of cattle were dotted like so many very small mice. His abode was mean in the extreme, with scarce sufficient to make life supportable. The rules of his order forbad him to acquire any property, and he subsisted from day to day on charity — just as did his friend the Korale. The priest often visited me on the plantation, and examined with much curiosity the various books and pictures about the bungalow. On one of these occasions an incident occurred which threatened at first to cut short our intimacy ; but was eventually forgotten or laughed at. I had frequently pressed my yellow-robed friend to partake of my meal, and taste a little port wine, of which I knew most of these people are very fond — but in vain ; he professed the utmost dislike to any strong drinks, independently of the restriction laid on them by their rules. One day while conversing with him, I was called away to the coffee store by one of the labourers, and left him alone, sitting by my little jungle sideboard. As I was returning immediately afterwards, and when near the door, I heard a great coughing and spluttering, and strange choking noises. Upon entering I found the priest almost dead with a fit of coughing. He staggered against the wall, his eyes were stream- ing with water, his hands clenched together, while down his long golden robes, a jet black stream had made its sable way. A bottle lay at his feet. The truth flashed across me in a moment. The wary priest has gone to my sideboard to steal a taste of the forbidden wine, and had, unfortunately, taken a good draught from a quart bottle of ink ! Next in importance to the characters already named, was one Ranghamy the head constable, deputy sheriff, tax collector and there is no saying what besides. He was the right hand man of the Korale, not quite so stout, but more thick headed, save when his own interests were concerned, and then it was remarkable how his faculties brightened up and illuminated the social atmosphere of Malwattie. Ranghamy was not a native of the village, nor of the district ; none had ever known wheuce he came except the Korale, and he had long since forgotten. The hydra-headed official had a numerous progeny of Rangharnies of both sexes, besides a large herd of sleek, well-favoured cattle ; yet, oddly enough, he had neither lands whereon to pasture the one, nor salary wherewith to feed and clothe the other. Still they were all fed, clothed and pastured. The junior head constable and the little female deputy sheriffs, and the tax collectors in arms were clad in whiter robes than any other young villagers. As for the cattle they might have been exhibited at the Smithfield show, 8 and won all the prizes by several stone of fat. Whether they grew thns corpulent from any miraculous interference of Buddha, or were fattened by some scientific process upon a few constable's broken staves and collector's decayed tax books, or whether they were daily driven upon other people's lands who dared not complain to the Korale, and if they did, could not expect the head constable to impound his own bullocks, which of these might have been the case, I never learnt, though I had my suspicions in the matter. Ranghamy was said to have realised considerable suras by hiring ont his cattle to the Moormen who convey rice and salt from the sea coast on pack bullocks to the interior. Of this prosperity his dwelling gave abundant proof; for he had not only English crockery and cutlery, but a decanter mysteriously covered up with a floor mat, in which it was whispered wine was once seen. Two pictures in frames, in glaring colors, graced the walls, while on a kind of shelf was placed, by way of ornament, a jar with a faded gilt label, inscribed "leeches." Not far removed from the constable in locality, and dig- nity of office, was the village peon, and post holder, graceless and lazy as any within the Central Province of the Island, and that is saying a good deal : it would have been a difficult thing to have shown that Puncheyralle, the Post Holder did anything to entitle him to the name beyond bestowing an occasional kick on the letter carriers or runners as they passed through the village ; yet the man grumbled at receiving no more than five rix-dollars, or seven shillings and sixpence a month, for the discharge of these onerous duties. Puncheyralle had a rather bustling little wife, who did all the heavy work for him, except the kicking : the pigs, the garden, the fowls, all were in her charge, and while she and the very small children cooked the meals, and kept the house in order, their lord and master lay on his back, or beat the tom-tom or native drum, or perhaps gambled with a neighbour for a few copper challies. The remainder of tlie village was made up of families generally poor enough, who derived their sole support from the produce of their patrimonial lands. In several instances the domestic arrangements of these people, with a view of keeping their little property from dwindling away by frequent divisions, were singular enough to an English mind. There were two or three households in which several brothers had but one mfe amongst them,* and singular as this custom may ap])ear to Europeans, they dwelt together most harmoniously : indeed family quarrels were at that time exceedingly rare. A picture of one of these groups is a portrait of them all. Poor to abject misery in all but rice and a few fine grains, these people are invariably landholders, some of them on an infinitessimally small scale despite the marital arrangements I have mentioned. At times the family will be large, swelled by the addition of an aged grandfather or grandmother, or some such relation, and with, occasionally, a numerous progeny of all ages. Beyond the culture of their rice, of primary importance, the ground that produces their few additional necessaries such as chillies, tobacco and fine grain is lifctlo enough, A few of them possess one or two buffaloes ; most of them have a caricature of a pig and a few scarecrows of fowls; but there is only one milch cow in the entire range of Malwattie. It was truly astonishing to see how early the young children were put to tasks of strength. The boys were made to look after the buffaloes and the rice-fields, while the girls were set to weave mats, pound the rice from the husk, fetch water, and such work. Often have I seen a little delicate child, six or seven years of age, staggering up a tolerably steep path, with an infant placed astride accross its little hip, and a huge earthen chattio of water on its head. Such early toil as this. * Since the date at which this was wiittcn (1852) Polygamy in the Kandynrv country has been forbidden by legal enactment. 10 equally early marriage, and generally poor and scanty diet, lead to one inevitable result, premature old age. The Priest «made a pretence at keeping schoocl but I failed to learn the nature of the instruction he professed ta give. A dozen dusky infants assembled within the porch of the Vihare occasionally, and there, squatted on the ground, chanted a dismal alphabetical chorus : but I never found any progress made beyond this preparatory arrangement. There was but one exception to the sameness of the population of Malwattie ; it consisted of a small household, not far from the foot of the hill near the Vihara, and closely adjoining the bullock-track or bridle path leading past my estate from the highroad. Here, beneath a pretty tope of neverfadiug trees, where blossom and fruit and sweetest perfumes played their part all through the year, dwelt a blind old man and his pretty grand-daughter. The tiny hut they dwelt in was not more diminutive than neat : so clean, and white and fresh within; without, all was beauty and order. Had a whole legion of mountain sylphs and wood-nymphs been busily employed about the place all night long and every day, it could not have been kept in more perfect and picturesque neat- ness. The little fence around the cottage was so nicely trimmed ; the garden in front so well swept and watered ; the orange and lime trees so carefully tended, and always so delighted to bear plenty of fruit for dear little Dochie to gather, that they did not bend and droop with the heavy clusters of golden wealth, as some trees would have done, but actually danced and leaped about in the morning and evening breezes, as though their burden were no burden but the merest pastime. Pretty little Dochie, gentle little Dochie, was not more than twelve years of age when I first made her acquaintance, one hot morning in the dry season. I caught her gathering some oleander blossoms and roses, and country jessamine, and thought I had never seen anything half so lovely, barring her colour. I reined in my pony and asked her for a draught of water ; 11 mstead of looking alarmed, as would most of her class wlieu thus accosted, she smiled good-natur- edly, and tripped into the Httle cottage. I was off my nag and in the pretty n flower-garden when she came out vnth a cocoa-nut shell of — not water, but bless the dear child — rich, white, goat's milk. I am not quite sure, but I rather think I must have kissed her, as I returned her the homely flagon ; at any rate, we became the best of friends, and it ended in Dochie taking me to see her old bhnd grandfather, who was busily working at a net of some sort, and then to inspect one of the neatest little farm-yards, I had ever seen out of old England. The whole place was a perfect miracle of industry and neatness ; and I could not help asking how she managed to keep it so. It appeared that their neighbours assisted, at certain seasons, in working the garden and bringing it into good order, and that the old man helped her to carry the water from the little bamboo spout, which the villagers had fixed for them to convey a supply from the hill stream at some distance, to the extremity of their property. They appeared to be in want of nothing that could make them comfortable ; as to money, they had little enough, their sole earnings being from the sale of her goats' milk, flowers and fruit to wayside travellers. She assured me, that when the pilgrims passed on their way to the sacred foot-print on Adam's Peak, she sold as many flowers and as much fruit as the garden could produce, and enabled them to be quite ex- travagant in white cloths and handkerchiefs. From that time forward I never passed through ^Malwattio without a draught of fresh milk and a little bouquet gathered by Dochie's own tiny hand. At length it came to my dis- mounting regularly, and in course of time, amongst other things 12 WQ talked of, were books and knowledge. Her dark bright eye^ sparkled as I told her what wonders she might learn if she could but read English books. The strange art was now her sole thought, and one day she found courage to ask me how she could learn it. I hesitated, for I did not quite see how to help her ; but when I offered to send her a book with the English alphabet, and moreover, to teach her to read the letters, her joy was unbounded. In a few months, my pupil had not only mastered the alphabet, but could spell small words, and read several short sentences. Not content with this, I talked to her of religion, and explained the nature and history of Christianity as well as my ability allowed me. I was not quite so successful here; but I was content to pave the way for future labourers, and rejoiced to find her always anxious for truth. It was, I think, quite a year after my first acquaintance with Dochie, that one morning I alighted as usual and was surprised to find my pupil absent, and in her place a young Cingalese man, evidently of the low country. My surprise was equalled by his own. In a minute after Dochie came bounding in with eggs and milk, and some little light cakes just prepared for the stranger, who, I then perceived, had his arm bandaged, and altogether looked fatigued and ill. I did not remain long that day ; and learned, on retiring to mount my pony, that the stranger had sought refuge there very early that morning, having in vain begged through the village for a resting-place ; he had been robbed and beaten during the previous night on some lonely track, and Dochie hesitated not one moment in welcoming him within their little dwelling ; and, in her own singleness and purity of heart, acting the good Samaritan. I could but admire her kindness ; and yet mixed with admiration, was a feeling akin to jealousy. I wished that it had been my fate to have been robbed and beaten, if only for the pleasure of being tended by the gentle Dochie. Again months rolled on, the low-country stranger and the robbers were all forgotten. Changes had been, meanwhile, 13 stealing over the face of the hitherto changeless Malwattie, and those not for the better. The worst of all innovations was the establishment of an arrack tavern in the very heart of the village. The Government in its anxiety to add to its revenue, and increase its means of developing the resources of the country, (I think that was what they termed it) had granted permission to the renter of the arrack licenses for the Kandyan country, to establish a few score additional taverns, one of which novelties was located in, Malwattie ; and soon where before had been quiet contentment, was nothing but brawling riot. It is true the Executive presented an antidote with the poison, by establishing a free school opposite the noisy tavern; but education stood small chance in competition with arrack, and for every new pupil at the desk there were a score of fresh drunkards. This led to an increase in the duties of the police, and soon after, to a salary to the head-constable ; crime was on the increase ; law suits were instituted ; families at peace for several generations, became deadly enemies ; and ere a year had elapsed since the introduction of the tavern, the whole social fabric of Malwattie was rent and disrupted into ugly fragments. I continued to visit my friends the Korale and the Priest, both of whom, especially the latter, spoke bitterly of the arrack nuisance, and looked upon the establishment of the school as a direct attack upon Buddhism. I saw plainly however, that there was another and deeper feeling, antagonistic to the educational scheme, in the bosoms of these leading men of the place. They felt that by diffusing enlightenment amongst the poorest of the villagers, the British Government would in time raise the masses of the people above the level of the headmen, in which case their influence would at once disappear. Their unflinching opposition was but little needed, for the native cultivators could not be made to appreciate that knowledge which their immediate superiors did not possess. Too prone to take as their models those above them, the villagers were 14 ■content to remain as tliey knew their fathers had been, and as they saw Korales and Dessaves were. Unfortunately, those in charge of Government schools have yet to learn that they have been toiling with the broad end of the educational wedge foremost ; that in Eastern countries enlightenment can only flow downwards, never upwards : that to elevate the Indian serfs, you must first improve the intellectual capacities of those whom they ever have, and ever will regard as their patterns. My progress with the flower-girl]s schooling was satis- factory, and I had besides, the pleasure of finding her inclined to cast aside the superstitions of Buddha. lu these tasks I was at this time aided by the teacher of the Government school, a Portuguese descendant, who seconded my efforts most zealously. The months flew rapidly past, and twice a week found me and Dochie seated beneath the shady foliage of a young orange tree, deep in our labors. It was quite the end of the hot season, that I was com- pelled to leave my plantation and journey across the country to the opposite coast of the Indian peninsula, in search of Malabar labourers to secure the coming crop; I was absent nearly two months, and found myself one cool pleasant day in August riding homewards across the broad open prairie- lands adjoining Malwattie. The rich foliage of the jungle and the gardens shone as brightly as ever in the afternoon sun. The hill-streams rippled as pleasantly down their stony courses. Tet the village was no longer the spot I once knew it ; brawling and angry words were easily met with ; its old patriarchal peace and simplicity had departed from it. I rode on musingly, and at length pulled up in front of Dochie's little garden; I started in my saddle at observing that it also was changed, and so sadly too. The friendly orange tree with its yellow fruit and its pleasant shade, was not there. The oleanders were drooping in the ground ; some of the fence was torn down, and a vile black bullock, that I could have massacred on the spot, was cruelly browsing over the 15 flower-beds. The door was closed ; the shutters were fastened^ I imagined all sorts of calamities to have happened, everything in short but what was actually the case. I made one brief inspection of the new neglected place ; then mounted my pony and rode homewards fearing lest some villager should break the tale of sorrow. It was nearly evening when I rode up the winding path leading to my bungalow, oppressed with a fear of I knew not what. The old building stood, as it ever had done, quietly and humbly in the midst of the coffee fields, but I saw at once there were some changes. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I beheld in the centre of the little grass plot, facing my front verandah, some small flowering shrubs and an orange tree so like the one I had missed from Dotchie's garden that I began to fancy I was still down in the village, and that the little flower-girl was peeping at me from behind some of the coffee bushes. As I stood looking at the orange tree my servant placed a letter in my hand, traced in true native style, on a dry leaf in Cingalese characters. It was from my pupil herself , and told me in a few simple sentences all that had occurred. I breathed more freely to find her alive. She was married, she said to a young and rich Cingalese trader, a christian and inhabitant of Colombo. She hoped shortly to be admitted a member of our Church, and thanked me deeply for what I had done for her. The old blind man her grandfather was with them, and they were all happy. They trusted I should always bo so. In my garden, she said, she had caused to be planted the orange tree I had so often admired and sat under, with a few flowers from her garden. She prayed that for many years to come, the tree would yield me plentiful crops of cool, refreshing fruit. The reader will perhaps smile when I say that, after read- ing this note, I shed some tears, tears of real sorrow and pain. Heaven knows I wished the poor girl well and happy ; but though I never could have looked ou her other than as a gentle IG innocent acquaintance, loveable for her simple purity, I felt her departure keenly. To the many dwellers in the thronged cities of the west, the loss of such a companion of my wild, lonely, jungle-life, may appear trivial enough ; yet to me it was an event. My servant told me what the little note had omitted. ' Dochie had been wooed and won with true Cingalese brevity, by the same young low-countryman who had been so kindly sheltered and tended by her when robbed and beaten, as I have before told. He had been successful in trade, and had now a large store in Colombo. It was long before I ventured again near Malwattie. To me it was no more a " garden of flowers " and least of all did I care to pass by the green fence and gate where Dochie's pretty smiling face had so often welcomed me. At last I persuaded the old Korale to set some of the villagers to work and open a new path for me nearer his own bungalow, by which means I ever after avoided a spot, the sight of which served but to fill me with vain regrets. The place and the people were so changed that I soon become a stranger in tha village. OUR COOK'S WEDDING. fN some parts of the East, and especially in the Island of Ceylon, there are many old customs which the progress •of civilization has not as yet effaced ; and happily so, for they serve to keep up a kind and friendly feeling between the different classes and races of the country. One of these time-honoured customs is the presence of European or burgher employers at the weddings or family festivals of their native servants who seldom omit inviting their masters and families on such occasions. Being the guest of an old resident of Colombo, I received an invitation to be present at the nuptials of his head cook, a Cingalese of good ancestry, who it appeared was to be united to the ayah or waiting-maid of a neighbour. They were both Catholics ; and, as such, were to be married at one of the churches with which the native section of the town abounds. From some cause, my host could not attend on the eventful day. I was, therefore, left to make my way alone to the happy scene, which I learnt lay at some distance from our bungalow, at the further end of the long straggling outskirts. Noon was the appointed time ; the Church of Saint Nicholas the place ; and in order that I might examine the locality I was about to visit, and which was entirely new to me, I left my quarters soon after our breakfast of rice and curry. It was a truly tropical day : the sea-breeze had not commenced to blow, and the cool laud- wind had been fairly done up an hour since. In mercy to the horse and the runner by his side, I ordered the man to drive slowly. The sky seemed hot and coppery — too warm to look blue ; and the great orb of Hght and heat had a sort of lacquered hue that was oppressive in 18 the extreme. Round the great lake, past the dry, stagnant, putrid fort-ditch, to that part of the Black Town known as Sea Street. How different from the quiet, broad Dutch streets, or the cool, shady lanes and their fine old burgher mansions ! Here all was dust, and dirt, and heat. A dense crowd of people, of many of the nations of the East, was passing to and fro, not, as with us, along the pavement — for there was no footway — but horses, bullocks, carriages, donkeys, and human beings all hurried along pell-mell : Arabs, Moormen, Chinese, Parawas, Cingalese, Kandyans, Malays, Chitties, Parsees, and Bengalis, were jostling each other in strange confusion. I shuddered as I beheld a brace of overheated bullocks in an empty cart, rush madly past me into the midst of a whole host of men, women, and children ; but, strange to tell, no one seemed any the worse : there was, to be sure, a little rubbing of shins, and a good deal of oriental swearing on the occasion, but no more. A vicious horse broke away from his Arab leader, and dashed across the street, and down a narrow turning, where women and children seemed to be literally paving the way ; the furious animal bounded over and amongst the living pavement, knocking down children of tender years, and scattering elderly females right and left, but still harm- lessly. I felt puzzled at this, and concluded that they wera " used to it." The thronged street, along which I was slowly travelling, appeared to be the only thoroughfare of any length, shape, or breadth. From it diverged, on all sides, hundreds of dwarf carriage-ways — turnings that had been lanes in their younger days. They were like the Maze at Hampton Court, done in mud and masonry. 19 if any Europeans ever care to venture; the sights and the effluvia are such as they prefer avoiding, with the thermometer standing at boiling-point in the sun. Curiosity, however, got the better of my caution ; and, descending from my vehicle, I leisurely strolled up one of those densely-packed neighbour- hoods, much to the annoyance of my horsekeeper, who tried hard, in broken English, to dissuade me from the excursion. Whether it be that the native families multiply here more rapidly, in dark and foul places, I know not ; but never had I seen so many thrown together in so small a space. Boys and girls abounded in every corner. As I passed up this hot, dusty, crooked lane of huts, the first burst of the cool sea- breeze came up from the beach, glowing with health and life- I looked to see how many doors and windows would be gladly flung open to catch the first of the westerly wind, and chase away the hot, damp, sickly air within ; but I looked in vain. Not a door creaked on its rusty hinges, not a window relaxed its close hold of the frame ; the glorious light of day was not to be permitted to shine upon the foul walls and floors of those wretched hovels. There was business, however, going on here and there. The fisher and his boy were patching up an old worm-eateo canoe, ready for the morrow's toil ; another son was hard at work upon the net that lay piled up in the little dirty verandah. Next door was a very small shoemaker, sharing the little front courtyard with a cooper, who did not appear to be working at anything in particular : but was rather disposed to soliloquize upon buckets and tubs in general, and to envy the hearty meal which a couple of crows were making of a dead rat in the street. Farther on was a larger building, but clearly on its last legs, for it was held up by numberless crutches. It was not considered safe to hold merchandise of any description ; and, as the owner did not desire the trouble and expense of pulling it down, ho had let it out to a Malay, who allowed strangers to sleep in it on payment of a small nightly foo. As 20 I passed by, a crowd of poor Malabar s, just arrived from the opposite coast of India, were haggling for terms for a night's lodging for the party, and not without sundry misgivings ; for some looked wistfully at the tottering walls, and pointed with violent gestures, to the many props. Wending my slow way back towards the main street, I came upon a busy carpenter's shop — a perfect model of the kind. In this country some carpenters are also carriage- builders, and the place I then stopped to examine was the home of one of these. It was a long, low, rambling shed, such as we might consider good enough to hold cinders or firewood : the leaf-thatched roof had been patched in many places with tattered matting ; the crazy posts were undermined by the pigs in the next yard, where they shared the dirt and the sun with a heap of wretched children, and a score of starving dogs. Every kind of conveyance that had been invented since the flood, appeared to have a damaged representative in that strange place. Children's shattered donkey-carriages, spavined old breaks, and rickety triacles of the Portugues period^ hackeries of the early Malabar dynasty, palanquins of Cingalese descent, Dutch governors' carriages, English gigs, were all pent up, with irrecoverable cart-wheels, distorted carriage- poles, and consumptive springs. Had I possessed any antiquarian experience, I doubt not I should have discovered amongst the mass an Assyrian chariot or two, with a few Delhi howdahs. The master-mind of this coach-factory was a genuine Cingalese who, in company with a slender youth, was seated on his haunches upon the ground, chisel in hand, contemplating, but not working at a felly for some embryo vehicle. After one or two chips at the round block of wood between his feet, Jusey Appoo paused, arranged the circular comb in his hair, and took another mouthful of betel ; then another chip at the wood ; and then he rose, sauntered to the door, and looked very hard up the little lane and down it, as though he momentarily expected some dreadful 21 accident to happen to somebody's carriage in the next street. 