CHAPTER VI
The sail from Tuticorin to Colombo, Ceylon, is 147 miles. The first thing one notices in Colombo, the capital of Ceylon, is the large number of natives wearing very little clothing. Ricksha pullers are as numerous as flies and very annoying, as they follow one about the streets for an hour in the hope that the visitor will patronize the two-wheeled sulky. Where men and women are dressed, it is hard to tell which from which, as a large number of the men wear long hair, tied at the back in a knot. In addition, the high-caste Singhalese wears an amber-colored comb just under the crown of his head; it is what women call a backcomb. A great many of these are made from turtle shell and are very expensive, based on the wealth of the wearer. Men's clothes look more like a dress than man's apparel, so, when men are seen wearing long hair, a backcomb, and a sort of dress, one looks on them as half-women. The women are much given to wearing clothes of flaring-colored cloth, but there is still a strong reflection of India on all sides. The best way to appreciate Ceylon is to visit that island before visiting India, for after one has passed through India and then visits the lesser country he will not absorb some of the beautiful and interesting things for which Ceylon is famed, because of the noted mosques, temples, mountains, and teeming millions found in the greater country.
The congested population of Ceylon may be inferred from its area—25,000 square miles—containing over 4,000,000 people. The island is 270 miles long and 140 miles wide at its broadest part. Since 1796 the island has been under British control. The exports are interesting, as they include tea, coffee, cinnamon, cocoa, cocoanut oil and rubber, besides other tropical products. Ceylon is administered by a governor, who is subject to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London.
Scaffolding used in Ceylon and other Eastern countries when erecting buildings is odd. The supports to which the floors of the scaffolding rest are bamboo poles, and the crosspieces and other material used to work on are held together by rope, no nails being used. The scaffolding is so bulky, crude and shaky that the walls of a building look as if they were out of plumb, but the scaffolding nearly always hides the new building entirely from view.
Most of the ships plying Eastern seas stop at Colombo, and, with the exception of Port Said, it is perhaps one of the most popular maritime stations in the world.
The buildings of Colombo would not suggest being in far-off Ceylon. They are composed of brick, stone, and mortar, several stories in height. The streets are clean. Colombo, however, is the rosy apple with the decayed center, as a mile from the European or business center is the Pettah, or native town, with its squalid quarters, narrow streets, ox carts, absence of sidewalks, people barefooted, and many of untidy appearance. More English is spoken in Ceylon than in India. The population of Colombo is nearly 200,000.
A splendid driveway and promenade runs along the ocean front, and is paved from the city to a well-known hotel. Also a good park and museum that is interesting. Cinnamon trees grow in the park, and from the bark of the trees a cinnamon odor arises. There are two qualities of the cinnamon, known as quills and bark. The quills look like bark strips taken from a sapling, and are over a foot in length, tied in bundles. The export of cinnamon from Ceylon is 120,000,000 pounds of bark a year. All the vegetation about Colombo is tropical.
One of the social gauges by which a European is measured is the class of railway coach in which he travels. If it be a second-class coach he is thought little of by the natives, and is apt to get the cold shoulder from Europeans. When a white man has become a victim to the liquor habit and loses self-respect in the black countries a collection is generally taken up among Europeans to buy his passage to some other country.
Some 6,000 Europeans live in Ceylon, which accounts for the newspapers being well patronized, both in the city and throughout the island.
One of the prettiest trips in the world is from Colombo to Kandy, 75 miles separating the two cities. One meets with cocoanut palms and other tropical growths in the hot countries along the sea coast, but to travel through a tropical section on a railway train for that distance is unusual. The train passes through a stretch of heavy vegetation, then an open strip of country, with bright green-colored rice paddies (fields or patches) on both sides of the track. Next the train is flanked by groves of cocoanut palms, which disappear when the train darts into a tunnel. Emerging, on the side of the hill will be seen growing the broad-leafed breadfruit tree, and a similar looking one, the jacfruit tree, with large, rough-looking shuck, is also a product of the soil. Down in the valley the pale-green paddies will be found, the rice growing in a foot of water. Into another tunnel the train suddenly disappears, and an upward grade is traveled, when short, stubby rows of tea bushes appear. Then, looking to the right, rise mountains to a height of 2,000 feet. On another side natives may be seen in a large grove, with small tin cups in their hands, devoting their time to the trees; these are rubber-tree tappers and sap collectors. The air has now become clearer and cooler than the humid atmosphere of Colombo. Along the roads that parallel the railway track may be seen a light wagon, or trap, with two fast-stepping bullocks hitched to the vehicle. These are known as "trotting bullocks," and are the fastest means of passenger transportation away from the more populous centers. All landscape scenes and vistas on the route from Colombo to Kandy are luxuriantly tropical.
Kandy has a population of 25,000, but if the same place were located in Europe or in the United States, considering its attractiveness, half a million people would occupy one-story bungalows on the verdure-drooping hillsides and the pretty valley would be lined by homes of wealthy people far beyond the limited space now built upon. Splendid roadways and paths, embowered with tropical leaves, have been cut into the hillsides, and from these one looks down on a pretty lake in the valley. When the beauty and attractiveness of places cannot be truly portrayed by modern photographic appliances, it is difficult to reflect their characteristics with the pen. The altitude of Kandy is nearly 2,000 feet above sea-level, which insures a better atmosphere than is usually found on the coast in tropical climes.
Kandy was the capital of what was known as the Kandy Kingdom, and was subjected to attacks by both the Portuguese and Dutch from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, when England added that section of Ceylon to her possessions, in 1815.
Buddha's tooth and other sacred Hindu relics having been brought to Kandy at an earlier date was the means of bringing that pretty place in Ceylon to the fore. It has not been made clear whether Buddha had but one molar or a full set, but the inference is that he had but one tooth, as the sacred bone is referred to as Buddha's tooth. There is no question about Buddha having been quite a traveler, as the imprints of his foot will be shown visitors at places separated by many hundreds of miles. And in connection with the foot imprint, it is always designated as Buddha's foot, so, if the one-tooth theory is to be entertained, his having but one foot, or one leg, would be equally as tenable. The tooth, anyway, like the Koh-i-Noor diamond, was considered a treasure, and for that precious reason it had been stolen on several occasions, but the original molar seems to have got lost, or some one is secreting it until the price of that particular bone advances to a fabulous figure. But the Hindus of Ceylon had to have a Buddha tooth, so an imitation "grinder" was made—a piece of discolored ivory two inches long and about an inch in diameter, which looks more like a crocodile's tooth than that of a man. The sacred tooth is said to repose now under a golden lotus flower, and the flower is hidden by seven metal shrines containing jewels in a sacred building in the courtyard of Maligawa Temple. In front of the temple is a tank containing tortoises, from whose "coverings," perhaps, the Singhalese will make haircombs later.
Taking a short trip from Kandy, a river was reached, and the ferry boat was slowly pulled from one side to the other by men with ropes. The boat was crowded with ox teams and almost naked natives. A short distance from the ferry landing seven elephants were seen bathing in the river. Continuing along a tropical overgrown road, at a bend we were confronted with three elephants in charge of mahouts, each carrying by its teeth four sacks of copra. A rope had been placed around the center of the bags, was pulled tight, and a short end of it was held by the elephants' grinders. The products were being brought to the ferry by the big beasts, and oxen would then draw this to Kandy, the nearest railroad center. By the same means tea and other products are transported, and provisions from Kandy are delivered at the other side of the river, from which point elephants advance the wares beyond. The elephants are owned by an heir of the old Kandy rulers, and on certain holidays they are brought to the city, when they parade about the former capital fifteen times.
Women standing in water nearly to their knees were engaged at transplanting rice stalks in paddies. The paddies, or beds, which are banked with earth from 6 to 12 inches on all sides to retain water, range in area from a space six feet square to a plot containing acres. In these the rice is sown, and when the stalks have grown to about a foot high most of them are transplanted. In some parts of the paddy the rice will be too thickly sowed, and in other sections not thick enough. The stalks in the thickets will then be pulled out, those left being the regular growth. The surplus stalks will next be transplanted in thinly sowed places of the bed. By this means the paddy would be equally sown; and it was interesting to observe the alertness with which the work progressed. At a place in India a dozen men were seen baling water from a ditch into a paddy with their hands, illustrating the crude methods in use. Rice is the staple food of natives in Ceylon.
In both India and Ceylon one never sees a woman servant engaged at housework in European homes or hotels. Men are exclusively employed at this occupation, women doing the harder work in the fields, carrying water, bricks, etc.
The Royal Botanical Garden, located a few miles from Kandy, was the most interesting one seen. We had visited the clove groves at Zanzibar, and specimens were growing in the Kandy garden, but we had not seen the nutmeg tree before. The nutmeg grows on a tree as large as the buckeye, or horse chestnut, and is of the same nature, differing in one respect, however, the nutmeg being protected by an inner shuck. It falls from the tree, when the outer shuck cracks, but is protected by the inner or second covering. It is then the size and color of a pink peach, but when the second shuck has been removed the nutmeg of commerce is seen. The vanilla bean hung from vines in the garden; the pepper vine was seen among the plants growing; the sago palm grew there, also the "candlestick" tree, besides other rare growths. Some of the larger trees in this garden were bare of leaves, which tropical oddity was accounted for by the presence of flying foxes—the same as those mentioned in Leg Four—hanging by the claws of one leg from the limbs during the day. There were thousands of these large bats, and, as in Tonga, they were considered sacred, and no one would kill them.
In this part of Ceylon most of the land was under tea cultivation. Tea exports from the island are nearly 190,000,000 pounds a year.
While oxen are the means of transportation in both India and Ceylon, automobiles may be seen skimming about the good roads in both countries.
A return was made to Colombo, where a ship, on which passage had been engaged, was about due to leave that port. I had sailed on English, Swedish and German vessels till I had reached Bombay; but from Colombo I started east on a Japanese ship.