Round the Wonderful World

I think we'll go for a jaunt, if you're ready, as the light falls quickly here. There is no difficulty in getting two rickshaws, and how they spin along. They say the men who drag them don't live many years, as the constant running wears them out, but they look healthy enough and show no more exhaustion after running than a horse does after trotting. Each one has twisted up his dhoti, as the white skirts they wear are called, showing his bare brown legs; the upper garment is simply a European cotton vest. We spin along the bright red road by the sea, seeing the long lines of foam breaking gently on the beach, and then turn into shady roads where trees with brilliant yellow leaves light the wayside. Then we pass through a native village with huts of thatch, while plantains, which at home we call bananas, grow on broad-leaved plants by each door. There is dust enough here, and mangy-looking pariah dogs, and cocks and hens, and multitudes of bright beady-eyed children with hardly any clothing on. There is plenty of foliage and greenery and a freshness and richness of colouring that is much better than the grey leafless harshness of an Egyptian village, for this land gets plenty of rain. Everyone seems good-humoured and happy, and the children look fat enough; some of them are very black, with woolly heads, of a different type from the others. These are the children of a race called Moormen.

When we get down near the hotel I want you to come into this jeweller's shop in the arcade; you'll see a strange sight. A crowd of tourists are sitting round a table which is covered with little heaps of shining stones, unset and piled on squares of white paper; some are brilliant blue, others flashing crimson, others sombre in hue, but showing a glitter of living light whichever way you turn them. The odd thing is that the visitors are handling them and turning them over, and examining them quite freely, while the owner, a wizened old man in horn spectacles, hardly watches!

"They're not real?"

Indeed they are! Rubies, star-sapphires, opals, and many another precious stone. That native owner has a queer faith in the honesty of his customers! Long may it last!

We are only in Colombo for one night, and to-morrow we are going up-country to stay with a friend of mine, a tea-planter.

As we are undressing you give a sudden start, "What's that?" Only a lizard scuttling over the dark-washed bedroom wall, first cousin to the chameleon you saw at Abu Simbel. He is quite harmless and lives on flies. He runs like a little shadow across the wall and sometimes he loses his balance and comes down thump on the floor, or breaks his fall on the mosquito curtains. He is one of the signs that we really are in the East; here is another. Listen for a moment at the window. There is a distant barking of dogs, a far-away crow from a defiant cock, a strange murmurous chant of men, weird cries intermingled, and now and then the deep beat of a parchment drum. The people of the land are all awake and stirring though it is late – the East never really sleeps as profoundly as does the West; there is a restlessness in the blood that stirs too much, and a pulsating warmth in the air that does not allow of deep slumber; it is the restlessness of the jungle translated into town life.

Next day at the station we find that the porters, though dressed in neat blue suits, have pronounced chignons of the same type as their brothers who draw the rickshaws, and in spite of their European-cut coats and trousers they run about with bare feet! We might make a museum of the strange porters we see on our wanderings, collecting a specimen from each country!

The train is comfortable enough and there is a luncheon-car, so we shan't starve this time; besides, the journey to Kandy is only a few hours. There I hope we shall be met, as I haven't the least idea whereabouts my friend, Mr. Hunter's, tea-plantation is; however, I sent him a wire yesterday directly we arrived to say we would come by this train, so he is sure to be there.

The line for the greater part of the way is laid on a terrace or shelf cut out of a hillside, and it winds along climbing ever up with a towering wall on one side and a precipice on the other. The little stations have hardly room to wedge in, but they are very gay with flowers – indeed the whole line is, for great yellow daisies and the terra-cotta blossoms of a pretty creeper called lantana climb everywhere. As we get higher and higher we can look down and see the country spread out before us like a map; it is cut up into neat little fields and would be like a draught-board except that the fields are often on different levels one above the other, made on land cut out from the hillsides. These people grow rice, which is to them what maize is to the Egyptian. In the fields, before it has been threshed, it is known as paddy. They live on rice and very little else, and seem to thrive on it. Rice pudding if repeated every day for a month at both breakfast and dinner would grow monotonous, but the man of the East does not find it so. His rice is not cooked with milk but with water, and is eaten with a little curry made of fish or vegetables to give it flavour.

Higher yet, and soon we see the hills laid out with rows of a tiny dark-green bush, planted as neatly as rows of turnips; this is the tea for which Ceylon is famous, and we shall get a nearer look at it presently. That and rubber are the staple crops that Englishmen come out here to raise, but they also grow coffee and other things too.

When we arrive at Kandy there is no sign of anything to meet us and no white man on the platform, so I make inquiries of the stationmaster, who is a Eurasian, which means that he has some white blood in his veins. He knows Mr. and Mrs. Hunter perfectly well, he says, though he has not seen them for a day or two. If, as I say, I wired, they are certain to send in a trap to meet us; but it may have been delayed or still be in the town. If we care to go up and look round, and come back again, he will meantime make inquiries. With many thanks we take his advice. The town is quite near and we find the main part of it built around a pretty little lake near which is the famous Temple of the Tooth. This is a massive building visited by thousands of pilgrims, because it enshrines a relic of great sanctity, nothing less than the tooth of Buddha! What Mohammed is to the Mohammedans so Buddha is to the Buddhists, among whom the greater part of the people of Ceylon may be counted. But Buddha is more than a prophet; his followers say that he has appeared on earth many times, and that the last time he came in the form of an Indian prince who, instead of living in careless luxury, left his home and wandered forth among the people to discover the meaning of life. When he found it, after deep meditation, he left certain precepts and rules to his followers. Some of them are very good, resembling our own Commandments: "Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not lie," "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not drink intoxicating liquor." But, unlike the Mohammedans, the Buddhists do not believe in God. Their idea of blissful happiness at the last is to melt away into a kind of nothingness of perfect peace, with no desires, no worries, and no cares.

All over the East you find temples which are supposed to contain some part of Buddha's person, hairs, teeth, even a collar-bone! Of course it is impossible that these things should be genuine, and in any case, if they were, there is nothing sacred about them. The worshippers always say they do not look upon Buddha as a god, but only a great spiritual teacher, yet the poor and ignorant come and worship and bow down in these temples, and there is no doubt that to them the image itself stands for a god. The tooth which is here is kept in many caskets, one within the other, and it is never shown except on very great occasions. Mr. Hunter saw it once, and says it is not a human tooth at all, but a great thing like a boar's tusk or possibly an elephant's tooth. He couldn't get a good look at it, anyway he saw enough to be quite sure that it is not human at all, and the same may be said without doubt of all similar relics.

What a lovely scene! The graceful dark-skinned crowd in their softly flowing garments of the purest pinks you ever saw, with sulphur yellow and rich red draperies thrown over them, are idling by the hoary grey steps of the temple and dropping bits of bread into the ponds in front. They are feeding the tortoises, fat lazy beasts who will hardly move to snap at the fragments unless they fall before their very noses. These beasts are supposed to be sacred too, and so they have an uncommonly good time of it. This massive building, temple and palace in one, was inhabited by the old line of native kings who made Kandy their capital.

We must get back to the station or we may miss Mr. Hunter. When we arrive there we find there is no sign of him, whereat the attentive stationmaster is greatly distressed. He advises us to hire a trap and drive to some place with an unpronounceable name, where Mr. Hunter is sure to meet us; visitors often do that, he says. I try to discover why we can't drive all the way, but his answers are not enlightening; "big hill," he replies, and I don't see why the trap can't go up a hill! However, we shall see. He engages a trap for us, anyway; with a scarecrow horse and a friendly looking driver whose hairy legs protrude from wrappings of cinnamon-coloured cloth – once white, I suppose – and we are off. The roads at first are very good; and there is none of the dust we suffered from so much in Egypt, for Ceylon is a moist land. In fact, it looks rather like rain now, with heavy clouds gathering up.

After going at a slow trot for a considerable distance the driver pulls up, and pointing with his whip to a tree-covered mountain says something unintelligible, which turns out to be "'Unter Tuan," after he has repeated it about six times. This means Mr. Hunter, "Tuan" being the same term of respect here that "Sahib" is in India.

There is no sign of a house or any living being; the place is absolutely deserted. In vain I sign to the man to go ahead; he shakes his head and remains seated on his box like an image of despair. I get out and see that the road runs away to nothing in the bushes and scrub in front, it just ends suddenly for no apparent reason, and while I am looking I hear a slight crackling in the bushes, and a tall, thin, very dirty-looking youth appears and salaams respectfully. The driver immediately begins to converse with him, whereupon the youth takes our bag unceremoniously out of the carriage and putting it on his head beckons to us to follow him. There is nothing else for it, so, after paying the driver, we do so, feeling like two infants in charge of this fellow.

I try the lean lad in English, asking him if he knows Hunter Tuan's place, but he swings round, looks at me gravely, and continues his graceful, elastic walk.

It is pretty warm, and the path is narrow and lined by thorn bushes, so the going is not easy; but the youth seems to float on ahead with mysterious ease, and we pant after him feeling as if our lives depended on not losing sight of him. At last the bushes get so thick that we have to push our way through, and we suddenly see him a good distance ahead, half-way across a broad and shallow river which bubbles round his knees.

"Hi!" we shout after him. "Stop!" And he turns, but only to beckon imperturbably and continue evenly on his way. It is evidently the custom of this country to walk through rivers when you meet them! Easy enough for the inhabitants, who are not encumbered with shoes and stockings, but for us…

Down we go and are soon hard after him with our boots slung round our necks and our stockings stuffed into them; the cool water splashing round our legs is rather pleasant. Lucky it is not deep. We have to stop and re-clothe on the other side. Here our coolie has condescended to wait for us, and just as you are about to sit down on a convenient hillock of bare brown earth he waves you away, and you see that big red ants with a most fierce and warlike appearance are running about it; it is their home and fortress! Once more booted we struggle on, uphill now, on a stony path, and very stiff work it is. When we tell our guide to stop for a moment he looks at us condescendingly and stands with his burden poised on his head, not even caring to put it down as he waits until these poor creatures, who are not carrying anything at all, regain their breath, and that makes us feel so inferior we don't like to stop often! The clouds gather and blacken, the perspiration is running down my back, and I am as wet as if I had waded through the river up to my neck. I should be glad to see the house, for we have been scrambling upwards for quite an hour now. What a place to live in! Fancy having to come down here every time you wanted to do a little shopping!

Another hour at least! A few drops, muttering thunder, and then, quicker than one can say it, a blinding, crashing downpour. Never in my life have I seen rain like this until that night at sea when we passed through the edge of the cyclone, and now twice have I met it in a week! It is simply a water-spout. A brilliant flash of lightning shows us the youth crouching under a bank some yards ahead, and we dive into the nearest place, following his example. Luckily the bank is high here and there is a kind of cave beneath a mass of broad-leaved plants; there is just room for the two of us huddled close together, and the wall of water sweeps past the entrance like a curtain. The rain makes a deafening noise, it literally crashes down; the path is a mountain torrent; if we had stayed there we should have been swept off our feet; it seems as if the whole mountain-side must go. We hang on to each other, avoiding the trickles as best we can. Hullo! this plant is a cardamom, carrying little seeds rather like spicy pepper; nibble one, it may keep off the effects of the wetting we have been unable to avoid altogether. How cold it seems to have grown all of a sudden! Is it the rain, or because we are so much higher up? I suppose really it is the latter, because I remember now that the planters always live on the tops of hills to get the fresh air, which is more healthy there than in the stifling valleys.

It is a long time before the storm passes, and when at last it dies down to a few drops and we emerge and shake ourselves, all trace of the coolie boy has vanished! Yes, it is true! He has gone, and the bag too! Well, he must have gone upward or we should have seen him pass, so let us hope he is honest and has taken the bag to the house. There is only one path, so we can do nothing but follow.

On we climb again, and presently the scene changes; we have got into the tea-scrub, and wander among rows of bushes about the size of gooseberry bushes, receiving deluges of cold water against our legs. The path zigzags this way and that, rising each time so that we can look back and see it lying below us in fold after fold. At last! There is an opening! I see a glimpse of green lawn and some poinsettias! This must be the place! Yes, I can see the bungalow, and here is a mackintosh-clad figure hastening down the path to greet us.

"My dear fellow! However did you get here? Why on earth didn't you let us know? We'd have sent to meet you!"

As we grasp hands I explain about the telegram. "Oh, then I shall get it with the letters to-morrow morning!" he says lightly. "No matter, so long as you are here and safe. I was afraid you had got lost upon the mountain-top, and was setting forth to seek you."

"But how did you know?"

"Your coolie arrived with the bag a quarter of an hour ago, and your name is written on the label very large and clear. Delighted to see you! The missus is romping round getting your beds aired and pinning up curtains in your honour!"