"The dresses of the natives are different from Bengal; men wear combs like the women of other countries, and have a loose cloth round their legs, vastly resembling a petticoat. Their language is the Cingalese; an open and gentle sort of well-vowelled dialect, which sounds prettily and euphoniously enough, like the Malayan language.
"Trade altogether is not very extensive in Ceylon. At Galle there are but three or four merchants, forming the entire mercantile community of the place. At Columbo there are, perhaps, twenty merchants and agents, and there is a Ceylon bank. The local trade is confined to three articles, viz., coffee, cocoa-nut oil, and cinnamon, though a few folks are beginning to turn their attention to sugar. Coffee is reared in plantations on the higher lands, and in chosen spots in the interior. Some of the plantations have done well, and, after the third year, are described as having paid more with the one season's produce than all the preceding and preliminary outlay and price of block put together. Several concerns, however, are losing, the soil being unsuitable; the present low prices for Ceylon coffee, in England, must utterly ruin them. It has been proved, that the only chance of success is with clearances on the forest and large tree lands: the plant thrives in these, though it takes three years to bear, and attains maturity only after the fifth year; it is expected to last ten years. Like all other concerns, those under proprietors themselves fare the best, and are easily distinguishable from those superintended by agents; but all managers live very uncomfortably. The superintendents get about 150 rupees per month, which is little enough, for supplies of the commonest necessity reach only from Kandy, or from a distance, and they are frequently without supplies at all, subsisting then on rice and the poorest produce of the villages around them. The Ceylon coffee itself ranks next to Mocha in the English markets; but recent prices must be insufficient to meet the charges of production. It is planted much in the same manner as with tea in Assam. After clearance, they set the plants at certain distances, when they grow to about the same height as the tea-tree. After blossoming and ripening, and before falling, the fruit is gathered; when there is a simple process, by some wheels and cheap machinery, to clear the berry from the pulp and skin.
"There are cinnamon gardens, near Galle, but they are not pleasing to look at, and assuredly there is no spicy and aromatic odour on the breeze, as the poets would fain establish in reference to this island, the famed Taprobane of old! When you bruise a twig or shoot of the cinnamon-tree and break off a small bit of the bark, the scent of the cinnamon is powerful and pleasant. The cocoa-nut oil is expressed much in the same manner as in Bengal, but it surprised me that, for domestic use at Galle, it was so expensive; they asked sixpence for two quart bottles of it, or, at this rate, about five rupees and more per maund. I should have expected it to be cheaper in Ceylon.
"The Rifle corps seemed to be a fine, well-disciplined body of men, chiefly Malays or their descendants. The regiment is officered like the line, and the dress, appointments, setting up and look of the soldiers were excellent.
"The salaries and receipts of the public functionaries and others in Ceylon are not quite so good as under the Company, but the habits of living, as I have before remarked, are more economical, and, I dare say, there is more money comparatively saved in Ceylon, than in the Company's wider and more imperial territories."
The new arrival at Ceylon is sorely beset by pedlars, who tempt him to invest a small portion of his capital in ivory snuff-boxes and knife-handles, tortoise-shell combs, card-racks, &c. A very few of these articles, purchased at a third of the price asked for them, may prove acceptable to friends in England, but we would recommend the Ceylon visitor to abstain from too large an indulgence in his generous inclinations, for ivory pays a heavy duty in England, and, after all, the articles brought home may be procured in England at as cheap a rate.
After leaving Ceylon and passing through the Maldive islands, which, though very low and level, are green and picturesque, no object of interest presents itself until the port of Aden is reached.
Quitting Aden, the shores of the Red Sea are frequently seen, but rarely approached during the upward voyage. In six days Suez is reached, and, as soon as boats can come off to the steamer, the passengers are landed and almost immediately conveyed by van (see previous details on this head) across the desert.
The town of Suez offers no kind of inducement to prolong one's stay. Small, dirty and destitute of any architectural beauties or antique remains, it exhibits the worst specimen of a Mahomedan city in the whole Ottoman empire.
Arrived at Suez, it will be for the passenger who has not contracted for the entire trip home, to select his own method of getting to Cairo. The vans of the Transit Company offer unquestionably the most convenient and expeditious mode of carrying the traveller across the desert; but there are not wanting persons who prefer the romance and independence of a tedious trip on the back of a horse, donkey or camel. If there were any objects of interest worthy of an occasional halt in the desert, the inconvenience of this slow progress would have its counterpoise; but when we assure the traveller that there is not one single fragment of antique remains, one solitary picturesque spot, nay, nothing, beyond one tree, seven station-houses, and a multitude of rat-holes and camel-skeletons, to diversify the broad, glaring, sandy waste, he will not hesitate about the prudence of paying his £12—the whole cost of transit to Alexandria—or £9 to Cairo only, and joining the bulk of his fellow-travellers in the omnibuses.