The rank and file of the common people, clad in various colors, form a brilliant panorama in the streets of Colombo on a gala day, mingled with whom are itinerant exhibitors of legerdemain, snake charmers, hustling dealers in gewgaws, peddlers of bonbons, native women bearing baskets of fruit on their heads, and naked Tamil laborers,—living bronzes,—on their way to the wharves. All phases of life are represented. An occasional blind and decrepit native is seen, guided by a small lad, who solicits pennies with which to purchase a little rice and curry, as the boy says in broken English. The most persistent beggars of all whom one meets in the thoroughfares are the Buddhist priests, who extend a dirty brass dish for alms, while mumbling some unintelligible gibberish. An occasional stranger and some humble natives respond to his appeals by contributing a few pennies, but the aggregate of his collection must be very small.
There dashes by us, while we watch the scene, a gay party of English residents in a four-horse drag, bound to Mount Lavonia. This is a pleasant resort five or six miles from Colombo, on the coast line, where there is a very good public house, built originally for a private residence by a former governor of the island. It stands upon a promontory some fifty feet in height, which juts out into the sea, washed on either side by the waves of the Indian Ocean. This hotel is a conspicuous white building, and forms a familiar landmark for inward-bound vessels. It is much cooler at Lavonia than at Colombo, as the location is more open to the sea breezes, besides being upon an elevation.
Let us also invite the reader to embark upon an excursion; but in place of hugging the sea coast by means of a coach and four, we will turn our faces inland by railway toward the olden capital of Kandy, in the heart of the island.
CHAPTER XI.
The Ancient Capital of Kandy.—An Artificial Lake.—The Great River of Ceylon.—Site of the Capital of the Central Province.—On the Way from Colombo to Kandy.—The Tiny Musk-Deer.—The Wild Boar.—Native Cabins.—From the Railway Car Windows.—The Lotus.—Destructive White Ants and their Enemies.—Wild Animals.—The Mother of Twins.—A Little Waif.—A Zigzag Railway.—An Expensive Road to build.—"Sensation Rock" with an Evil History.—Grand Alpine Scenery.
Kandy, the Maha-neura, or "great city," of the Singhalese, one of the ancient capitals of Ceylon, is beautifully situated in the bosom of the verdant hills in the central province of the island, just about half way between the east and west coasts, a little more than seventy miles north of Colombo. Here the town nestles on a bend of the Maha-velle-Ganga ("great sandy river"), which nearly surrounds the old city at a distance of three miles from its centre. It became the capital of the island in 1592. As it was repeatedly captured and burned by the Portuguese, Dutch, and English, it presents no architectural monuments with any pretension to antiquity. Here we are about seventeen hundred feet above sea level, beside a spacious, though artificial lake, which represents a small portion of the grand system of irrigation for which Ceylon was so famous through a score of centuries. There is no natural lake worthy of the name in the country, though there are numerous ponds, large and small, here and there, especially in the southern part of the island. In the centre of this large sheet of water, with its charming aspect of repose and freshness, is a tiny island, where the last king of Kandy, who was a notorious tyrant, established his harem with true oriental lavishness. It is now improved as a safe place for the storage of gunpowder and other explosive war materials. At least, it was formerly thus appropriated, though perhaps it is not so now. The infamous sovereign referred to, Sri Wikrema Raja Singha, at whose death ended a long and famous line of kings, was outrageous beyond all precedent. He was accustomed to behead any one of his counselors who dared to disagree with him, also wreaking his vengeance upon the individual's innocent family, males and females, by treating them in a similar manner.
The immense tank at Kandy is of modern construction, having been finished early in the present century by the king whose name we have just given. The heavy embankment which holds the lake in its bed has been made into a broad and most charming esplanade, decked with handsome shade trees, thus surrounding the basin with an inviting driveway and promenade, enlivened by choice flowering shrubs, whose names only an accomplished botanist could remember. Among them the ever-fragrant cape jessamine is conspicuous, together with beds of violets and mignonette. Palms prevail everywhere on the island, with their bare trunks reaching sixty or seventy feet upward, at which point they throw out their deep green, gracefully drooping foliage in thick clusters. The lake is about three miles in circumference, encircled by a low stone wall, and is, judged even by modern rules, a remarkably skillful piece of engineering.
The Maha-velle-Ganga rises in the base of the neighboring mountains, and, flowing past Kandy, turns to the north, finally discharging itself by several mouths into the ocean far away on the east coast, near the port of Trincomalee. It drains in its course upwards of four thousand square miles of territory, being a hundred and thirty miles long, and is navigable by small boats nearly to Kandy. The hills which encompass the town make of it a verdant amphitheatre, and are themselves dotted with flourishing tea-plantations, mostly owned by English agriculturists, the growing of tea, as already explained, having largely superseded, or perhaps we should say supplemented, that of coffee throughout the island. In the higher regions, near the foot-hills, where the big river rises, there used to be a great coffee district, healthy and populous; but alas! malaria and jungle fever lie crouching upon its lower banks like a beast of prey, ready to pounce upon the passing and incautious traveler, while hungry, wide-jawed crocodiles lie half-concealed in the low mangroves, ready to snap up any dog or young native child which thoughtlessly approaches their domain. The Ceylon crocodile is a large animal, quite common on the inland rivers and deserted, half ruined tanks, and frequently measures over twenty feet from the snout to the tip of the tail. In the malarial districts, all sorts of insects, reptiles, and wild animals thrive and multiply abundantly, but to man, and even to most domestic animals, such regions are poisonous.