THE LAST OF THE GIANTS.
"I had thought of going," responded the Doctor, "to some point on the eastern coast, and there taking a steamer for India; meantime I would have ordered our heavy baggage sent around by water, so that it would meet us on arrival. There are several of these places, and the towns and the routes leading to them are pretty much alike. The most important and interesting is Trincomalee—pronounced Trínk-o-ma-lée—which you can find on the map by drawing a line nearly due north-east from Kandy."
The boys had a map of Ceylon before them, and by following the Doctor's instructions they speedily found the place he had mentioned.
"You observe," he continued, "that it is quite a distance from Kandy to Trincomalee, and there is no railway to carry us. We should be obliged to travel by the ordinary roads of the country; conveyance would be difficult to obtain, and our fare not of the best. We should have a tiresome journey of several days through the forests and swamps of the eastern part of Ceylon, and I doubt if the novelty of the scenery would repay us. The same would be practically the case if we went to Jaffna or Kalpentyn, other places that I had in mind—and, besides, we might wait some time there before finding a steamer to take us where we wish to go."
"Well," answered one of the boys, with a laugh, "please tell us about Trincomalee and what we might see on the way there, and then we shall be all ready for Newera-Ellia."
"Trincomalee is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants," responded the Doctor, "and stands on one of the finest bays in Asia, if not in the world. It would be a place of great importance on account of the magnificent port, if the country back of it amounted to anything; but, unfortunately, the region for a long distance is marshy and nearly useless, and so the fine harbor of Trincomalee is of no consequence. Moreover it is quite unhealthy, owing to the malaria from the swamps; and it is a common remark in Ceylon that when the Government wishes to get rid of its soldiers, it sends them to Trincomalee to die of fever.
"As to what you could see on the way I might name several things. We should see a tropical forest in all its glory, and make a practical acquaintance with the trees by resting in their shadows, and perhaps climbing their trunks through the aid of the parasitic plants that cover them. There is one tree a few miles out of Kandy which is the remainder of quite a cluster that formerly stood there. All the rest have been killed by the parasites, and this one, the last of the giants, is completely covered, and cannot stand many years longer.
"Then we should pass some of the tanks for which Ceylon is famous, or, rather, for which she was famous centuries ago."
One of the boys asked what these tanks were, and the Doctor explained their nature.
"Rice will not grow without water, and in ancient times a system was adopted of making artificial ponds or tanks to retain water that could be used in the seasons when the rains were not falling. The first of these ponds of which we have any record was built by one of the kings of Ceylon 437 years before our era, or more than 2300 years ago. It became the fashion for kings to build tanks for the benefit of their people, and at one time there was a great number of them; two kings are said to have built sixteen tanks each, and the fashion of building them continued more than a thousand years.