CASHEW-NUT.
"The country back of Colombo has a good many water-courses, some of them natural and others artificial. There are several lakes, but none of any great extent, though they are nearly all pretty in consequence of the rich foliage about them. A river with a sluggish current comes down from the north, and along its banks there are a great many floating houses, where the natives live just as they would on shore.
A COOLIE AT PRAYERS.
"At one place, where we passed a little hut, we saw a coolie standing outside and pouring water upon a stone, while he repeated some words which of course we could not understand. We thought he was engaged in some form of religious worship, and when we asked the driver, he said it was so. The man was probably a native of India, as this form of saying prayers is quite common in certain parts of that country."
The party went to bed early in order to have a good night's sleep, and be ready to start in the morning for the centre of the island. The express train for Kandy starts at 8 a.m., and consequently it was necessary to leave the hotel a little past seven. The boys found that the train was not unlike the one that carried them from Batavia to Buitenzorg, in Java; it was composed of carriages of three classes, the same as the Javanese trains, the third-class being occupied entirely by natives, while the second contained a mixed lot of middle-class natives and economical Europeans. The fares were six, four, and two rupees respectively for the different classes, the rupee being worth in round figures about fifty cents of our money. The distance between Colombo and Kandy is a little more than seventy-two miles.
It was Fred's turn to keep notes of the journey, and he wrote as follows:
"As the railway leaves Colombo it plunges into a tropical forest, and we were constantly surrounded by the most luxuriant vegetation we have yet seen. For the first thirty miles or more the country is flat, and every little while we dash along the borders of a tiny lake or a marsh full of aquatic plants, which are sometimes so thick that they crowd each other uncomfortably. These lakes are said to be the homes of crocodiles, and certainly they look as though a crocodile might be quite comfortable in them, and have enough to eat and drink.