These boats were filled with Indiamen and Ceylonese, who would have been dressed if they had only had some garment from the slice of cotton about the loin, up to their neck or down to the heel. In a short time our decks were filled with them; also Mussulmen and Arabs, with their small oval caps and vests, exposing breast and arms, and others wearing kerchiefs of all manner of gaudy colors wrapped about them and hanging to the knees like a skirt. But the thing that strikes you with the most singularity is, that the men whose heads are not shaved, wear their hair in a knot like women, secured to the back of the head with a large tortoise-shell comb. These fellows “salam” you, and their salutation is extremely servile. Some of them come for your clothes—they are washermen, and return your garments with remarkable quickness for the East. Others pull out of their kummerbunds at the waist a lot of what they call precious stones, and say, “Wantshee, me have got good mooney stones—star stones, ruby, cat’s-eye stone, sapphire,” &c.
“Where every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile!”
The “prospect” of being cheated is not a pleasant one at any time; and these men are very “vile.” The fellow will hold the precious jewel to the light, and in the dark, vary its position, rub it, and praise it with great earnestness and sincerity, but should you be verdant enough to purchase the gem, even at half the estimate set upon it by him of the land of Golconda, an ordinary rat-tail file will very soon assure you that you have got a fine specimen of cut-glass. The genuine, or precious stones, are bought up by agents and sent to London. Should their sales grow very slack they are most desirous of trading for any old clothes you may have—oriental and old clothes!
I landed as soon as I could, after our salute, on the jutty, from which Mr. Barnum’s elephants had been shipped, and passing through a walled gate, entered the town, the sun shining down fiercely. The houses were of a yellow stucco, very low, without glass in the windows, generally, and their doors concealed behind mat screens. In my stroll in the direction of a fine new lighthouse, terminating a picturesque point where the sea continually breaks sullenly, my attention was attracted by a very long, notched white flag, with a number of smaller ones on the sides, hanging from a tall mast. On going toward it, I found it was placed at the entrance of a walled enclosure, which contained a mosque and Mussulman school. Fronting the door of the mosque was a pool of not the clearest water, enclosed in handsome masonry. While I stood there, many of the devout, among whom I saw a blind man, came in and washed their hands and face, to say nothing of abluting their dentals, previous to proceeding to their devotions inside the building; while in the interior were a number kneeling on mats, then sitting back on their bare feet, the palms of the hands meanwhile resting on the knees, occasionally striking their forehead against the tesselated floor, facing in the direction of Mecca. Their pointed, clog-like sandals they had left outside. I was told I could enter if I would remove my pedal covering, but I declined. Removing one’s boots after a long walk, in a temperature of ninety odd, is not exactly the thing. I asked, quizzically, a long-bearded old Mussulman standing by, who understood English, whether he had any idols in his temple. He replied quickly: “No; there is but one God: we worshipped your Savior and turned our faces to Jerusalem, until Mahomet our Savior came—now we turn our faces to Mecca.” Pointing to a Hindoo temple, he remarked: “They have idols over there, but we are not allowed even to eat or drink anything when we are near these buildings.”
In a low stone edifice adjacent to this mosque I glanced in at a school, where fifteen or twenty infantile scholars of both sexes whose wardrobe complete consisted of ankle, waist, and wrist rings, and pendent little silver ornaments, squatted on mats. In their midst, a la Turk, sat a shaven-headed, long-bearded Mussulman, chewing the betel-leaf and areca-nut, and uplifting at intervals the rod of correction, which was more effective than the ferula of the Christian, owing to the scanty costume of the juvenile recipients of Mohammedan morality. The scholars were engaged in writing with bamboo pens, on boards covered with a clay preparation, passages from the Koran, which was lying open upon a little stand in front of the red-saliva pedagogue. When he turned a leaf of his sacred book, he did it with a portion of his white garment, never touching the page with the naked hand. It appeared to be a free jabber on the part of the tender nudes, in Arabic, but if a sentence was missed by one, down came the Damocletian ratan, and the humanity of breeches rushed with full force on the mind. The kind heart of Dame Partington would have been greatly grieved, and she would have philanthropically exclaimed, “Bless the inventor of clothing.” And “bless the inventor of clothing;” the vitiated taste that can find nothing repulsive in an exact marble nudity, which, in the flesh of the original would be thought with Dogberry, “most tolerable and not to be endured,” would be most fully satiated—gorged—after continually looking upon the half-clad and garmentless people of the East, no matter how fine their figures. He will certainly become of the opinion that dress is a part and parcel of a woman, and that she is never so engaging in appearance as when clad in Christian garments. “Greek slaves” in bronze don’t answer.
One is struck with the fullness, beauty, and glossiness of the hair of the natives, especially when he bears in mind, that those who do not shave their heads, walk uncovered under the hot sun of their clime. I had some curiosity to find out the secret of this. They use on their hair twice a-week the juice of limes, obtained by boiling them, and then dress it with an oil pressed cold from the queen cocoa, scented with “citronella,” a very singular and powerful perfume which they distil on the island. Sixty drops of the citronella is sufficient to perfume a bottle of the oil of considerable size.
Should you sleep ashore at the hotel, you are awoke at an early hour and informed that “bathing” is ready. Accoutred in a Lazarus-like robe, generally known as a sheet, you bid the heathen lead the way, and you follow to an outhouse constructed of bamboo and mats. Here two fellows pour cold water over you from copper “monkeys,” in such quick succession, that the most inexorable disciple of Priessnitz, would be soon forced to cry peccavi. Encased in the Lazarus garment you flee into your chamber. You are pursued here by a heathen, who tells you “me barber,” and proceeds to shave one side of the face at a time, shampoos your head with lime-juice, and then withdraws in favor of another idol-worshipping attendant, who mollifies you with a cup of fine coffee. The pleasant persecution over, you sleep again.
The news is conveyed from Point de Galle to Colombo by a pigeon-express, none of your “fly away to my native land, sweet dove,” business, with billet-doux, and riband around neck, but despatches, which are tied to the feet of the bird, who in flying draws them up under him, and in that way the paper is kept from a wetting, should it rain. The birds from one point are sent to the other by a coach, and not being fed in this strange cote, upon being turned out with their despatch they fly home. They fly seventy-two miles in an hour and three quarters.
This is an outline of modern Ceylon. The men who “bow down to wood and stone” here will tell you, that the footprints of a man, in stone, on the top of a mountain, is the footprint of their God, where he stepped over to the main land; but it is called Adam’s Peak, and the Mussulmen say that Adam and Eve dwelt there. They will tell you that Paradise was in the Seventh Heaven, and that Adam and Eve were expelled by the command, “Get you down, the one of you an enemy to the other, and there shall be a dwelling-place for you on earth.” Adam fell on Ceylon, or Suendib, and Eve at Joddah on the Red sea, and after two hundred years the angel Gabriel conducted Adam to where Eve was, and they came and dwelt in Ceylon.