CHAPTER XVI.
Point de Galle.—An Ancient Port, now mostly deserted.—Dangerous Harbor.—Environs of the City a Tropical Garden.—Paradise of Ferns and Orchids.—Neptune's Gardens.—Tides of the Ocean.—Severe Penalties.—Floating Islands of Seaweed.—Fable, like History, repeats itself.—Chewing the Betelnut.—An Asiatic Habit.—All Nations seek Some Stimulant.—Soil near Galle.—Cinnamon Stones.—Diamonds.—Workers in Tortoise-Shell.—Millions of Fruitful Palms.—Sanitary Conditions of Galle.
Next to Colombo, Point de Galle, with a population of about thirty-three thousand, is the most important town in the island. The port is somewhat difficult of access, and requires a local pilot to effect a safe entrance, owing to the fact that there are several sunken rocks very near the narrow channel. It is a treacherous harbor, as all seamen trading upon this coast are well aware, and has, first and last, swallowed up many a gallant vessel. Those early navigators, the Phœnicians, the first really commercial people of whom history informs us, made voyages to and from this port, and more than one authority identifies it with the Tarshish of the Scriptures. Ptolemy speaks of the Avium Promontorium,—"The Promontory of Birds,"—which marks the entrance to Galle, and here the Arabians, in the reign of Haroun al Raschid, came to meet the junks from China, and to interchange merchandise with them. Sir Emerson Tennent, after describing the charming first view of the place when he landed here, says: "Galle is by far the most venerable emporium of foreign trade now existing in the universe; it was the resort of merchant ships at the earliest dawn of commerce. In modern times it was the mart of Portugal and afterwards of Holland; and long before the flags of either nation had appeared in these waters, it was one of the entrepôts whence the Moorish traders of Malabar drew the productions of the remoter East with which they supplied the Genoese and Venetians, who distributed them over the countries of the West."
It is quite different at Point de Galle to-day. A significant state of dullness reigns supreme in the ancient port, while the town seems to be in a Rip Van Winkle sleep. How the early navigators so successfully avoided the rocks and shoals of this coast, how they managed to weather the confusing tides, hurricanes, and monsoons, is a mystery, while so many of our stoutest ships, guided by experienced seamen, and protected by all modern appliances, have been lost in the same tracks. Is it possible that we of to-day are no better navigators than those who sailed the Indian Ocean three thousand years ago? Were the voyages of Columbus and his followers across the Atlantic in small, half-decked caravels, miracles, or was the waste of waters so much less tumultuous four centuries ago? A few steamships still make of this place a coaling station, but these grow less in number annually, though to maintain this small branch of business every facility is freely given by the local authorities. If it were not that the English officials devote all available pecuniary means and their tireless energy to the advancement of the business interests of Colombo, quite to the neglect of Point de Galle, the rocks which impede the entrance of the latter port would long since have been treated to a liberal dose of dynamite. Strangers express great surprise that these rocks, which could so easily be demolished by well-known and inexpensive means, should still be permitted to threaten navigation. We have seen a record of thirteen steamships, up to January, 1893, which were wrecked and entirely lost at various times, in attempting to enter the harbor of Point de Galle. This is the more surprising because of the general promptness of the English government in liberally furnishing all possible marine improvements to her distant colonies.
The town is finely situated, crowning a steep, narrow, and rocky promontory, on a bay opening to the south. The name Galle means, in Singhalese, "a rock." The place is facetiously called, on the coast, the metropolis of false stones and real glass gems. The snug harbor is bordered by tropical vegetation to the very water's edge, including an endless number of palms. The town is divided, like Colombo, into European and native sections; the promontory, jutting southward, is entirely occupied by the former, and is called the Fort. The immediate environs of Galle form a natural tropical garden, over which botanists never fail to grow eloquent, both on account of its variety and its abundance of floral gems. One striking beauty in this connection is the marvelous development of the fern family, which is here seen as a low-growing creeper, and from that size to the proportions of considerable trees, the feathery fronds varying from lace-like consistency and size to that of broad and beautiful leaves of various shades of green. As to orchids, the hothouse climate of Ceylon develops them in marvelous beauty, both in the jungle and in the open fields. Nowhere else has the author seen the extensive and interesting family of ferns in such a state of thrift, except in New Zealand.
The climate is equable, damp, and hot, thus forming a paradise for ferns and orchids, which revel in their very opposite styles of beauty. There are less than twenty degrees variation between the warmest day and the coldest night of the year at Galle. The rankness of the vegetation surrounding the town, and also its undrained, swampy character, render it in some degree objectionable in point of health to Americans and Europeans, though it is not nearly so much affected in this respect as Trincomalee, where chills and fever always prevail more or less among the foreign population.
Extensive and many-colored coral reefs lie at the foot of the rocks which border the promontory in the harbor of Galle on the south and west. The natives put this beautiful marine product to a very unromantic use. Gathering it by the ton, they pile it up on the shore, mingled with wood and dried seaweed, and burn it to powder, thereby producing the lime with which the betelnut is mixed for chewing, as well as employing it in the mortar used for building purposes. Among these coral reefs one may see at any stage of the tide, when the sea is calm, a similar display to that which delights the visitor at Nassau, in the Bahamas,—submarine gardens, where various colored animate and inanimate objects (if we may thus signify the difference between animal and vegetable life), such as curiously shaped fish, shells, and rainbow-hued anemone, form beneath the sea kaleidoscopic pictures. Conspicuous among other varieties one sees the blue medusa, twelve inches and more in diameter. Here also is the curious globefish, with its balloon-like body and prickly hide. The clear waters of the Indian Ocean show the bottom, lying four or five fathoms below the surface, in charming colors and forms, like a well-arranged flower garden, hedged about by strange water plants. The floor of the sea, so to speak, is here studded with highly colored coralines and zoöphytes. The observer will see swimming near the surface the queer "flower parrot," so called, a fish having horizontal bands of silver, blue, carmine, and green, with patches here and there of vivid yellow. Verily, these Ceylon fishes display an oriental love of color. So strong was the light from above that the hull of our small rowboat cast its dark shadow fathoms deep upon the clear, white, sandy bottom.
These attractive marine spots where orange-yellow and emerald-green mingle with ruby-red, and which are called coral gardens, we have never seen surpassed, and only equaled in beauty of effect at Nassau. The enchanting marine fauna and flora of the Indian Ocean are indeed marvelous to one accustomed only to the cold, sandy ocean-bed of northern latitudes. About three fourths of all kinds of seaweed are now classed as animal, like the sponge, the coral, and the sea-anemones; only one fourth are vegetable. Professor Rene Bache tells us that the most thickly populated tropical jungle does not compare in wealth of animal and vegetable life with a coral reef. On the continental slopes, long stretches of bottom are actually carpeted with brilliantly colored creatures closely packed together amid forests of seaweeds.
There is so slight a rise and fall of the tide on the coast of Ceylon that it is scarcely perceptible, never exceeding four feet and rarely over three, but there are certain strong currents to be encountered on both the east and west coasts, whose velocity is augmented by the prevailing monsoon, and which cause some variations in the tide, besides materially interfering with shore navigation.
No delights are wholly of a piece. All pleasures are qualified by some inevitable conditions; temperate indulgence, even, has its price. As he who enjoys with enthusiasm the delights of a tropical garden has also to encounter the attacks of vicious mosquitoes, wiry land leeches, stinging flies, biting scorpions, and poisonous cobras, so the naturalist who dives among these submarine coral groves to secure specimens, and to enjoy the marvelous sights below the surface of the sea, meets with inevitable drawbacks. The millepora which float there burn him like nettles; venomous fish sting his naked body, and sea-urchins penetrate his flesh with their lance-like spines; while the jagged points of the beautiful coral wound his hands like the aggravating thorns on roses. These wounds inflicted beneath the water sometimes entail serious consequences, creating painful sores which last for weeks.