My First Voyage to Southern Seas

by William Henry Giles Kingston

This prophecy has been fulfilled, for we passed along a tunnel under the hill, through which thousands of bullocks have been driven, and under an archway in the rock.

Kandy is a comparatively modern city, having only become the capital of the kingdom about A.D. 1592, since which time it has been frequently burned. It stands closely surrounded by mountains, on the banks of a lake constructed by the last King of Kandy, in 1807. The habitations of the people were most wretched, as the king alone, and members of the royal family, enjoyed the privilege of having glazed windows, whitened walls, and tiles; the palace, and some of the Buddhist temples, are the only ancient edifices which remain, and even these are crumbling to decay. The chief temple was one built to contain the tooth of Buddha. Not that the original tooth really exists, because that was burned by the Portuguese. The present relic worshipped by all the Buddhists is more like the tooth of a crocodile than that of a man. It is preserved in an inner chamber, without windows, on a table, and is concealed by a bell-shaped covering, overspread with jewels.

The view from the side of the mountains above Kandy, looking down on the city with its temples, and palaces, and monuments, and its brightly glancing lake surrounded by hills, is very beautiful. In the lake is a small island, with a picturesque building on it, now used as a powder magazine. A road winding round one of the hills leads to a spot whence we looked down over a wild valley, with the river Mahawelliganga in the centre of it, rushing over a bed of rocks, the whole scene being one of the most majestic grandeur. Altogether, no city within the tropics is more picturesquely situated, or has a finer climate. Still, it is not equal to that of Neura-Ellia, very properly called the sanatorium of the island, to which we were bound.

Mr Fordyce, before lionising the place with Nowell, assisted me in making all possible inquiries for Mr Coventry and Alfred. Several people knew my grandfather. When they last had seen him he was on his way to his coffee estate, which was situated in the extreme east of the district suitable for the growth of the plant, and beyond Neura-Ellia. He had had a young man with him, but who he was and where he was going they could not tell. I was in great hopes, from the account I had heard, that Alfred might have joined him. I was now more than ever impatient to set off, and so was Nowell, for he was anxious to begin his attacks on the elephants, the buffaloes, and elks he was in search of.

“Come along, Marsden, we will set off at once to look for my Will-of-the-wisp old friend, though I suspect we shall have to travel fast to catch him,” said Mr Fordyce to me. “His activity would put to shame many young men, I suspect, and your brother must not let the grass grow under his feet if he wishes to please him.”

Mr Fordyce kindly engaged a vehicle of a somewhat antique structure to convey us as far as Neura-Ellia, a distance of fifty miles. After that we should at length have to engage horses and bullocks to carry our tents and baggage. Although I found the journey exceedingly interesting, as we met with no exciting adventure I will pass over it rapidly. The road for some miles led along the banks of the rapid and turbulent Mahawelliganga. We crossed it by a bridge of a single arch, 90 feet high, with a span of 200 feet. We were told that during the rains of the monsoons the water has been known to rise 60 feet in its bed, carrying carcasses of elephants and huge trees in its current. By the side of the road were numerous shops or bazaars, kept by low country Singhalese, for the sale of all sorts of commodities to the country people. The Kandyans have a strong prejudice against engaging in trade, and indeed dislike to mix at all with strangers. They therefore, when able, perch their residences in the most out-of-the-way and inaccessible positions. The latter are the Highlanders, while the Singhalese are the Lowlanders of Ceylon. The Kandyans have a strong attachment and veneration for their chiefs, by whom, however, they were cruelly oppressed, and both races possess the vices inherent to a long-continued slavery—a want of truthfulness and honesty; at the same time they possess the virtue of strong family affection and respect for their parents and elders.

At Gampola, once the capital of the kingdom, there is a rest-house where we stopped. We had now reached the region where the first successful attempt at the systematic cultivation of coffee was made in the island. It had been tried in several places in the low country, but always had failed. Sir Edward Barnes, the great benefactor of Ceylon, first produced it on an upland estate of his own, in 1825, since which time the export from the island has increased to 67,453,680 pounds, annually. A great stimulus was given to the cultivation of coffee in Ceylon in consequence of the blacks in the West Indies, when emancipated from slavery, refusing to work; but in after-years, from the wildest speculation and the injudicious employment of capital, many of the English who had endeavoured to form estates had no means left to continue their cultivation, and wide-spread ruin was the result. Now, however, those who are able to reside on their property, by judicious management, find the cultivation a most profitable employment for their capital, in spite of the expense of bringing up rice for their labourers, and the destruction caused by winds, insects, caterpillars, wild cats, monkeys, squirrels, and rats. As the natives cannot be depended on as labourers, except in the first process of clearing the forest, the estates are cultivated by coolies, who come over from Malabar and the Coromandel Coast, as the Irish do in the reaping season to England, to find employment.

We continued our journey through a complete alpine region, except that the trees were very different to any seen in Europe. Among them was a tree the stem and branches of which were yellow, with the gamboge exuding from them, called the goraka; there was the datura, with its white flower bells; and the imbul, with its crimson blossoms; while tree ferns by the side of the streams rose to the height of 20 feet.

We stopped at the bungalow of some friends of Mr Fordyce, now surrounded by a plantation of upwards of a thousand acres of coffee-trees in full bearing, fenced in by hedges of roses. Nothing could be more beautiful than the view from the estate, embracing, as it did, mountains, forests, rivers, cataracts, and plains, seen from a height of nearly 4000 feet above the level of the sea. But a few years ago, about 1845, this very spot was covered with dark forests, wild as left by the hand of Nature. Nowell and I agreed that we should be perfectly ready to turn coffee planters, and settle down here for the remainder of our lives. Mr Fordyce laughed at our notion.

“Till you got tired of your own society, and then you would be heartily sick of coffee-trees and the magnificent scenery which surrounds us,” he observed.