(Native street on left, Buddhist temple on right, English church in centre.)
Kandy is very beautiful. It stands nearly 2,000 feet high, by the side of an artificial lake which the old kings of Kandy made, and embosomed in hills covered by lovely woods full of tropical plants and flowers and commanding beautiful views from their slopes and summits. There is a small native town containing the usual mixed population of Cinghalese, Tamils, and Moor-men; there are one or two English hotels, a church, library and reading-room; a few residents’ houses, and a scattered population of English tea-planters on the hills for some miles round, who make Kandy their rendez-vous.
Ajax makes great friends with the native youths and boys here; he has an easy friendly way with them, and they get hold of his hand and walk alongside. Of course they are delighted to find any Mahate who will treat them a little kindly; but I fear the few English about are much shocked at our conduct. When I first came to Ceylon my Tamil friend A. chaffed me about my way of calling him and the rest of the population, whether Tamil or Mahomedan or Cinghalese, all indiscriminately natives, “as if we were so many oysters.” I told this to Ajax, and of course there was nothing for it after that but to call them all oysters!
We find the few British whom we have come across in our travels very much set against the “oysters.” There is something queer about the British and their insularity; but I suppose it is more their misfortune than their fault. Certainly they will allow that the oysters are not without merit—indeed if one keeps them to it they will often speak quite warmly of the tenderness and affectionateness of servants who have nursed them through long illnesses, etc.—but the idea of associating with them on terms of equality and friendship is somehow unspeakable and not to be entertained. It seems almost de rigueur to say something disparaging about the oyster, when that topic turns up—as a way of showing one’s own breeding, I suppose; after that has been done, however, it is allowable to grant that there are exceptions, and even to point out some kindly traits, pearls as it were, which are occasionally found in the poor bivalve. It strikes me however that the English are the chief losers by this insular habit. They look awfully bored and miserable as a rule in these up-country parts, which must almost necessarily be the case where there are only five or six residents in a station, or within accessible distances of each other, and confined entirely to each other’s society.
One day Ajax and I went up to Nuwara Ellia. The railway carriage was full of tea-planters (including one or two wives and sisters), and there were a few at the hotel. It was curious to see some English faces of the cold-mutton-commercial type, and in quite orthodox English attire, in this out-of-the-way region. The good people looked sadly bored, and it seemed a point of honor with them to act throughout as if the colored folk didn’t exist or were invisible—also as if they were deaf, to judge by the shouting. In the evening however (at the hotel) we felt touched at the way in which they cheered up when Ajax and I played a few familiar tunes on the piano. They came round, saying it reminded them of home, and entreated us to go on; so we played for about two hours, Ajax improvising as usual in the most charming way.
Nuwara Ellia is 6,000 feet above the sea—a little village with an hotel or two—a favorite resort from the sultry airs of Colombo and the lowlands. Here the Britisher finds fires in the sitting-rooms and thick mists outside, and dons his great-coat and feels quite at home. But we, having only just come from the land of fogs, did not appreciate these joys, and thought the place a little bleak and bare.
CHAPTER III.
KURUNÉGALA.
On my way here, on the coach, I fell in with Monerasingha, a Cinghalese of some education and ability, a proctor or solicitor. He is a cheerful little man, an immense talker, and very keen on politics. He was very amusing about the English; says they are very agreeable at first, “but after three months’ stay in the island a complete change comes over them—won’t speak to us or look at us—but I can give it them back.” His idea seems to be that representative institutions are wanted to restore to the people that interest in public life which has been taken from them by the destruction of their communal institutions under British rule. He seems to be a great hater of caste, and thinks the English have done much good in that matter. “I am loyal enough, because I know we are much better off than we should be under Russia. The English are stupid and incapable of understanding us, and don’t go among us to get understanding; but they mean well, according to their lights.”
This place (called Kornegalle by the English) is a little town of 2,000 or 3,000 inhabitants, fifty miles from Colombo and eleven miles (by coach) from Polgahawella, the nearest railway station. It lies just at the foot of the mountain region of Ceylon, and takes its name, Kurunégala or Elephant-rock, from a huge Gibraltar-like rock, 600 feet high, at the base of which it nestles—and whose rounded dark granite structure, wrinkled with weather and largely bare of trees or any herbage, certainly bears a remarkable resemblance, both in form and color, to a couchant elephant. Ascending its steep sides, on which the sun strikes with fierce heat during the midday, one obtains from the summit a fine view—westward over low plains, eastward over mountain ranges rising higher and higher towards the centre of the island. The prevailing impression of the landscape here, as elsewhere in Ceylon, is its uniform green. There is no change of summer or winter. (Though this is the coolest time of year, the daily temperature ranges from 85° to 90° in the shade.) The trees do not cast their leaves at any stated time, though individual trees will sleep at intervals, resting so. In every direction the same color meets the eye—tracts of green scrub, green expanses of forest, green rice-fields, and the massed green of bananas and coco-palms. A little monotonous this in the general landscape, though it is plentifully compensated on a near view by the detailed color of insect and flower life. One curious feature is that though the country is well populated, hardly a trace of habitation is to be seen from any high point such as this. Even Kurunégala, which lies at our feet, is only distinguishable by its court-house and prison and one or two other emblems of civilisation; the native cabins, and even in many cases the European houses—which are of one storey only—are entirely hidden by trees. Those clumps however of coco-palms which you see standing like oases in the general woods, or breaking the levels of the rice-fields, with occasional traces of blue smoke curling up through them, are sure indications of little native hamlets clustered beneath—often far far from any road, and accessible only by natural footpaths worn by naked feet.
