October 27th.—At 8 o’clock in the evening we took our passage on the Océanien, a steamer bound to Marseilles. If the temperature permitted, I would jump for joy at the thought that it was our boat to Europe.
It was night when we left the port. Amongst the passengers we have on board the wife of the Japanese Ambassador in London, who was going to join her husband. She was accompanied by her sister and a lady companion, with whom she practised English and took lessons in geography on deck. Both Japanese ladies are dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, and it is only their small turned-up eyes and high-boned cheeks, which betray their nationality.
October 28th.—The children of a native couple bound to the Isles de la Réunion, romp in the corridor making a terrible row. They are awfully ill-bred and boil over with perversity, and pass their time in fighting and playing tricks and putting their tongues out to their “ayah” (nurse), an old negress wearing a yellow kerchief on her head, the ends of which passed through her large straw hat. She endeavoured to teach the naughty brats better manners, but it was all in vain; they continued to behave shockingly. I was sorely tempted to give them a sound shaking when they shrieked when taken to bed at night.
October 29th, 30th, 31st.—All these days there was no land in view, nothing but the endless blue of the sky and the endless waters of the Indian Ocean.
November 1st.—The sea is quite smooth and still our ship rocks very unpleasantly. We are approaching the verdant island of Ceylon, the most marvellous meridional point of India. The air is so pure that we perceive the Peak of Adam, at thirty miles off from Ceylon, the legendary site of Adam’s burial ground.
CHAPTER LXXXIV
COLOMBO
Towards night we arrived at Colombo and moored two miles off the low coast, bordered with cocoa-nut trees crowned with green palms. A long greystone breakwater with a round-topped tower at the end ran out into the sea, and over it in the distance Colombo with its red-tiled houses lay half hidden in deep green vegetation. Canoes brought on board Singhalese merchants with stuffs and other products of the land. We see everywhere British flags flying. We are on English ground under the tropic sun of Ceylon. From afar we perceive Adam’s Peak, the region where Paradise was. On the summit of the Peak there is the impress of a gigantic foot, the first footstep of Adam out of Paradise, according to the Christian legends, of Siva for the Brahmins, of Buddha for the Buddhists.
The Océanien is going to stop here twenty-four hours to discharge coal. I saw Singhalese porters, with sacks on their heads, mounting on deck and plunging down into the hold to come out again bent in two under their loads. We walked to the Great Oriental Hotel, which stands on the quay, quite near to the port, a large building surrounded on all sides by the broad veranda. There are colonnades underneath the hotel with shops.
The heat and damp of Ceylon are just as terrible as in Java. I passed a wretched night. I went to bed but not to sleep—oh, dear, no! for I just began to doze when swarms of mosquitoes recalled me to reality very soon.