We reached Kandy about 11.15, the train ascending to this place about 4400 feet. The line curving up the slopes so that we could frequently see the engine and forepart of the train rounding the loop in front of us. We could only secure a room for one night at the hotel (the Queen’s), so that we had to make the most of our time. Accordingly, after tiffin, we started in a carriage for what the hotel people prosaically called “No. 2. drive” (!).
Skirting the large tank or lake in front of the hotel, which has a solid stone palisading around it cut into points and pierced, we ascended a steep road, winding up the hills through lovely woodlands, at every turn presenting fine mountainous and panoramic views of the country. Beautiful clusters of bamboo of enormous size occurred frequently, the stems very thick and of an oxidized bronze colour, varying from dark to light. Another kind had bright golden coloured stems, and a lighter, more feathery foliage. Cocoa palms, plantains, and mangoes were abundant, also cinnamon plants. A native boy offered us a cocoa bean pod, and a spray of cinnamon—a pretty tree with a tassel-like flower. There were also large trees bearing massive pendulous fruits, which grow directly out of the trunk suspended on very short stalks in clusters of two and three. This fruit was called “Jack fruit.” It looked like a sort of gigantic walnut, and was covered with a soft green velvety kind of rind. The leaves of this tree was small and poplar-like in shape. The brilliant scarlet lily-like bloom of a dark leaved shrub was often seen, the flower having long stamens hanging out like a tassel.
The various drives which had been made over the hills and through these great woods were apparently named after different governors’ wives. There was Lady Longden’s drive, Lady Macarthy’s, Lady Horton’s, and so on. We sometimes had the impression, as the carriage followed the gravelled curves of these drives, that we were approaching some country seat among the hills. The drives, though well planned for points of view, and well kept, were, perhaps, a little too suggestive of the landscape gardener, a little too conscious and laid out to order, to be thoroughly enjoyable. We should have preferred to see the untouched work of the original designer of Ceylon scenery. The natural wild country unanglicised—though I know I should be told that without such roads and clearings one would not be able to see the country at all.
We British, somehow, always seem to carry suburban ideas with us everywhere, and English trimness and neatness even out into the tropical wilderness. We passed neat homes surrounded by smooth tennis and croquet lawns, as if bits of Chiselhurst or Surbiton had been suddenly dumped down in the midst of all this wonderful world of luxuriant growth and unfamiliar trees, and close to native huts of the most primitive kind.
The native roof here, as at Darjeeling, appeared to be either thatch or wooden shingles, and here, again, we were sorry to see corrugated iron creep into use everywhere.
The most primæval sight we had was perhaps that of the elephants bathing in the river. This was at a spot close to a native village, where we left our carriage and, walking through a grove, came out on the river shore where five or six black elephants—one a large one with fine tusks—were disporting themselves in the water, in charge of native attendants, rolling over on their sides and squirting the water over themselves by means of their trunks with the greatest enjoyment. The water was rather thick and reddish in colour from the clay of the banks.
On the way back to the hotel we passed the famous Buddhist Temple of the Tooth with its pagoda-like roof, but it looks but an insignificant building to be the centre of Buddhistic reverence and tribute.
This was a lovely moonlight night, and the walk by the lake would have been perfect but for the touts and vendors of all sorts of things that you do not want.
We left Kandy the next morning for Nuwara-Eliya; our travelling companions were two Germans from Berlin, father and son. The train continued to climb, the line curving more sharply than before. We saw some fine mountain distances and Adam’s Peak rising up afar, and soon entered a vast tea-planted district, the tea plants often bordering the railway line, and covering the slopes of the hills which seemed covered with a more or less regular green pattern, the dark velvety green of the tea plants intersected by the light feathery foliage of young rubber-trees, planted in regular rows at intervals in some places. The landscape was very clear and every detail sharply defined in the bright sunlight, with very little suggestion of atmosphere, except for the mountain distances which were deep blue.
