The coach came to the hotel at the appointed hour, and the three passengers took their places. They found that they had the vehicle pretty much to themselves, as there was only one other passenger, an English coffee-planter who lived up country, and had been to Galle on business. The vehicle was a rickety affair, and the horses were not half as good as those that had drawn the boys in their journey through Java; Frank remarked the low condition of the team, and the Englishman told him that horses were dear in Ceylon, as they were not raised in the country, but were imported from Burmah, Australia, the Malay Archipelago, and the Persian Gulf. "Those of us who want horses," said he, "are constantly on the lookout for new lots of whalers, as we depend on them to recruit our stocks."
Fred modestly asked what the whalers had to do with bringing horses to Ceylon.
"I see," said the Englishman, laughing, "you don't understand our expressions. A 'whaler' is a horse that has been imported from Australia; when you get to Colombo you will see placards on the walls, or advertisements in the papers, that choice lots of whalers have just been received, and will be sold at auction on a certain day if not previously disposed of at private sale."
"I suppose," Frank remarked, "that it is in the same way that foreigners living in China call an imported horse a 'griffin;' do you call these horses griffins as well as whalers?"
"Not often," answered the Englishman; "but sometimes you hear the name from an Englishman who has been in China. In India and Ceylon the term griffin is applied to a newly-arrived Englishman, and it sticks to him till he has been a year in the country. Griffin is frequently abbreviated to 'griff,' and those who are familiar with the talk of Englishmen in India know perfectly well what is meant when a man is called a griff."
"Returning to horses," he continued, "the best are from Australia, and they sell for nearly double the prices that the others will bring. Then we have them from the Persian Gulf, of a poor quality so far as appearance is concerned, but they do very good service. The team that we now have is composed of Gulf horses, and what they lack in speed they make up in savage tempers. They are difficult to manage, and, as one of your countrymen once remarked in my hearing, 'they are very handy with their heels!' A better horse than this is the Pegu pony, as it is called; it comes mostly from the western end of Sumatra, and stands the climate very well, besides being less vicious than the rest, but it cannot equal the Australian for speed."
DONKEY AND PACK-SADDLE.