The Pearl of India

CHAPTER XVI

Point de Galle. – An Ancient Port, now mostly deserted. – Dangerous Harbor. – Environs of the City a Tropical Garden. – Paradise of Ferns and Orchids. – Neptune's Gardens. – Tides of the Ocean. – Severe Penalties. – Floating Islands of Seaweed. – Fable, like History, repeats itself. – Chewing the Betelnut. – An Asiatic Habit. – All Nations seek Some Stimulant. – Soil near Galle. – Cinnamon Stones. – Diamonds. – Workers in Tortoise-Shell. – Millions of Fruitful Palms. – Sanitary Conditions of Galle.

Next to Colombo, Point de Galle, with a population of about thirty-three thousand, is the most important town in the island. The port is somewhat difficult of access, and requires a local pilot to effect a safe entrance, owing to the fact that there are several sunken rocks very near the narrow channel. It is a treacherous harbor, as all seamen trading upon this coast are well aware, and has, first and last, swallowed up many a gallant vessel. Those early navigators, the Phœnicians, the first really commercial people of whom history informs us, made voyages to and from this port, and more than one authority identifies it with the Tarshish of the Scriptures. Ptolemy speaks of the Avium Promontorium, – "The Promontory of Birds," – which marks the entrance to Galle, and here the Arabians, in the reign of Haroun al Raschid, came to meet the junks from China, and to interchange merchandise with them. Sir Emerson Tennent, after describing the charming first view of the place when he landed here, says: "Galle is by far the most venerable emporium of foreign trade now existing in the universe; it was the resort of merchant ships at the earliest dawn of commerce. In modern times it was the mart of Portugal and afterwards of Holland; and long before the flags of either nation had appeared in these waters, it was one of the entrepôts whence the Moorish traders of Malabar drew the productions of the remoter East with which they supplied the Genoese and Venetians, who distributed them over the countries of the West."

It is quite different at Point de Galle to-day. A significant state of dullness reigns supreme in the ancient port, while the town seems to be in a Rip Van Winkle sleep. How the early navigators so successfully avoided the rocks and shoals of this coast, how they managed to weather the confusing tides, hurricanes, and monsoons, is a mystery, while so many of our stoutest ships, guided by experienced seamen, and protected by all modern appliances, have been lost in the same tracks. Is it possible that we of to-day are no better navigators than those who sailed the Indian Ocean three thousand years ago? Were the voyages of Columbus and his followers across the Atlantic in small, half-decked caravels, miracles, or was the waste of waters so much less tumultuous four centuries ago? A few steamships still make of this place a coaling station, but these grow less in number annually, though to maintain this small branch of business every facility is freely given by the local authorities. If it were not that the English officials devote all available pecuniary means and their tireless energy to the advancement of the business interests of Colombo, quite to the neglect of Point de Galle, the rocks which impede the entrance of the latter port would long since have been treated to a liberal dose of dynamite. Strangers express great surprise that these rocks, which could so easily be demolished by well-known and inexpensive means, should still be permitted to threaten navigation. We have seen a record of thirteen steamships, up to January, 1893, which were wrecked and entirely lost at various times, in attempting to enter the harbor of Point de Galle. This is the more surprising because of the general promptness of the English government in liberally furnishing all possible marine improvements to her distant colonies.

The town is finely situated, crowning a steep, narrow, and rocky promontory, on a bay opening to the south. The name Galle means, in Singhalese, "a rock." The place is facetiously called, on the coast, the metropolis of false stones and real glass gems. The snug harbor is bordered by tropical vegetation to the very water's edge, including an endless number of palms. The town is divided, like Colombo, into European and native sections; the promontory, jutting southward, is entirely occupied by the former, and is called the Fort. The immediate environs of Galle form a natural tropical garden, over which botanists never fail to grow eloquent, both on account of its variety and its abundance of floral gems. One striking beauty in this connection is the marvelous development of the fern family, which is here seen as a low-growing creeper, and from that size to the proportions of considerable trees, the feathery fronds varying from lace-like consistency and size to that of broad and beautiful leaves of various shades of green. As to orchids, the hothouse climate of Ceylon develops them in marvelous beauty, both in the jungle and in the open fields. Nowhere else has the author seen the extensive and interesting family of ferns in such a state of thrift, except in New Zealand.

The climate is equable, damp, and hot, thus forming a paradise for ferns and orchids, which revel in their very opposite styles of beauty. There are less than twenty degrees variation between the warmest day and the coldest night of the year at Galle. The rankness of the vegetation surrounding the town, and also its undrained, swampy character, render it in some degree objectionable in point of health to Americans and Europeans, though it is not nearly so much affected in this respect as Trincomalee, where chills and fever always prevail more or less among the foreign population.

Extensive and many-colored coral reefs lie at the foot of the rocks which border the promontory in the harbor of Galle on the south and west. The natives put this beautiful marine product to a very unromantic use. Gathering it by the ton, they pile it up on the shore, mingled with wood and dried seaweed, and burn it to powder, thereby producing the lime with which the betelnut is mixed for chewing, as well as employing it in the mortar used for building purposes. Among these coral reefs one may see at any stage of the tide, when the sea is calm, a similar display to that which delights the visitor at Nassau, in the Bahamas, – submarine gardens, where various colored animate and inanimate objects (if we may thus signify the difference between animal and vegetable life), such as curiously shaped fish, shells, and rainbow-hued anemone, form beneath the sea kaleidoscopic pictures. Conspicuous among other varieties one sees the blue medusa, twelve inches and more in diameter. Here also is the curious globefish, with its balloon-like body and prickly hide. The clear waters of the Indian Ocean show the bottom, lying four or five fathoms below the surface, in charming colors and forms, like a well-arranged flower garden, hedged about by strange water plants. The floor of the sea, so to speak, is here studded with highly colored coralines and zoöphytes. The observer will see swimming near the surface the queer "flower parrot," so called, a fish having horizontal bands of silver, blue, carmine, and green, with patches here and there of vivid yellow. Verily, these Ceylon fishes display an oriental love of color. So strong was the light from above that the hull of our small rowboat cast its dark shadow fathoms deep upon the clear, white, sandy bottom.

These attractive marine spots where orange-yellow and emerald-green mingle with ruby-red, and which are called coral gardens, we have never seen surpassed, and only equaled in beauty of effect at Nassau. The enchanting marine fauna and flora of the Indian Ocean are indeed marvelous to one accustomed only to the cold, sandy ocean-bed of northern latitudes. About three fourths of all kinds of seaweed are now classed as animal, like the sponge, the coral, and the sea-anemones; only one fourth are vegetable. Professor Rene Bache tells us that the most thickly populated tropical jungle does not compare in wealth of animal and vegetable life with a coral reef. On the continental slopes, long stretches of bottom are actually carpeted with brilliantly colored creatures closely packed together amid forests of seaweeds.

There is so slight a rise and fall of the tide on the coast of Ceylon that it is scarcely perceptible, never exceeding four feet and rarely over three, but there are certain strong currents to be encountered on both the east and west coasts, whose velocity is augmented by the prevailing monsoon, and which cause some variations in the tide, besides materially interfering with shore navigation.

No delights are wholly of a piece. All pleasures are qualified by some inevitable conditions; temperate indulgence, even, has its price. As he who enjoys with enthusiasm the delights of a tropical garden has also to encounter the attacks of vicious mosquitoes, wiry land leeches, stinging flies, biting scorpions, and poisonous cobras, so the naturalist who dives among these submarine coral groves to secure specimens, and to enjoy the marvelous sights below the surface of the sea, meets with inevitable drawbacks. The millepora which float there burn him like nettles; venomous fish sting his naked body, and sea-urchins penetrate his flesh with their lance-like spines; while the jagged points of the beautiful coral wound his hands like the aggravating thorns on roses. These wounds inflicted beneath the water sometimes entail serious consequences, creating painful sores which last for weeks.

Off this southern coast of the island widespread moving fields of brilliantly colored seaweed are seen at times, dense enough to form quite an impediment to the progress of native boats which do not successfully avoid them. So compact are these collections of vegetable matter that they seem like a field of marshy land, rather than like a floating substance. This weed gives shelter to many species of mollusks and zoöphytes, quite similar to a collection of seaweed often encountered in the waters of the West Indies. Over this marine verdure hover great flocks of ocean birds. Now and then one alights to secure some tidbit of edible substance detected by its keen vision amid the thick branches and leaves. This mass of rockweed, so called, seems to come from the Indian continent at the north, but the natives have a theory that it is the cast-off growth of submerged islands, loosened from its native soil by the chafing of the restless sea after the raging of a severe storm. So the Singhalese have their "Atlantis;" fable, like history, repeats itself. Plato tells us of a vast island or continent, so named, which suddenly sank into the sea with a vast population, nine thousand years before his time.

The natives here, and at Singapore, Penang, Colombo, and along the Asiatic coast generally, when not sleeping or eating, are incessantly chewing the betelnut, which, as before intimated, gives to their teeth and lips a disagreeably suggestive color, as if they were covered with blood. The men, and some of the women also, carry the means for this indulgence about them at all times, secured in the folds of their one garment wrapped about the loins. They inclose a piece of the nut in a bit of green leaf, after adding a portion of quicklime, and thus form a quid which they masticate with great earnestness, expectorating the while as a person does who chews tobacco, for which it is an Eastern substitute. Sometimes the mass is permitted to rest for a while between the gums and the cheek, and though it is known to occasionally produce cancer of the mouth, the natives give it not a second thought. The betelnut is a tonic, though very little if any of the nut is swallowed, nor is the saliva which it produces. In some cases cardamom and pepper seeds are added to the quid to give it pungency. It is claimed also that this combination counteracts malarial influences, forming a preventive against fever, which attacks natives as well as strangers in the lowlands. This habit becomes inveterate with the Singhalese, just as smoking or chewing tobacco does with those addicted to the weed. The men here would rather abstain from food than from chewing this stimulating compound. It is said that Europeans who have contracted the habit afterwards give it up with equal difficulty. It is not alone the lower classes who chew the betelnut. Persons of good social standing do it, – priests, native officials, ladies in their boudoirs, and so on, just as some American women are addicted to the secret use of cigarettes, wine, or liquor.

The practice of chewing the betelnut is so ancient in Ceylon, and along the coast of India proper, that the Arabs and Persians who visited these countries in the eighth century, or say a thousand years ago, carried back the habit to their country, where it is still more or less prevalent in the sea-coast district.

Thus mankind, civilized and barbarian, seek some stimulant other than natural food and drink. In Europe and America, where tobacco is easily obtained, it serves the purpose with the majority. In Peru, the Indians universally chew the leaves of the coca for the stimulating effect it produces. In China, opium takes the place of tobacco to a certain extent, while in the region of which we are writing, the betelnut yields a mild stimulant and sedative combined. The Ceylon and Malacca men eagerly substitute tobacco when it is to be had, and sometimes mix it with the betelnut. No gift to the savages of the Magellan Strait is so acceptable or so eagerly sought for as tobacco. The natives of Terra del Fuego, half-starved and almost wholly naked in a frigid clime, will exchange anything they have for a few dried plugs of this seductive weed. If you meet a North American Indian in the wilds of the far West, the first thing he asks of you, with extended hand, is "toback." The Japanese imbibes the subtle stimulus of tea in excessive quantities; the people of the equatorial regions get tipsy on palm toddy; the Chinese make a bedeviling liquor from distilled rice; the Mexican gets his intoxicating pulque from the agave plant; grapes yield the fiery brandy used by French and English people; hops and malt stupefy the Germans; while corn and rye whiskey turn men into brutes in this country.

Immediately inland from Point de Galle, the surface of the ground rests upon a stratum of decomposed coral, and collections of sea-shells are found buried in agglutinated sand in situations raised far above the level of the sea, corroborating the supposition that Ceylon has been gradually rising above the ocean for many ages. The soil hereabouts is of a deep red hue, caused by the admixture of iron, and, being largely composed of lime from the comminuted coral, it is extremely fertile, producing certain crops of great luxuriance, yielding sometimes two and even three harvests annually. At Belligam, a short distance eastward from Galle, there is a large detached rock, two thirds of which is composed of the gem known as cinnamon stone. It is carried away in pieces of considerable size for the purpose of extracting and polishing it for ornamental uses. The author has seen, near Fort Wrangell, Alaska, a similar conglomerate of garnets, an interesting evidence of the erratic freaks of nature. The cinnamon stone is a crystal of a rich yellowish-brown tint, but little prized in Ceylon. As soon as such stones are found in large quantities they drop in market price; it is rarity which makes their value. When moonstones were first brought to the notice of Europeans, they were nearly as expensive as opals; now, they are sold by the pound or the hundred, for a few shillings the lot. Were all the diamonds to be put upon the market which are hoarded by certain large European dealers, those precious stones would diminish one half in value. Fashion and scarcity are the standards of value.

When we hear the topaz mentioned, we recall a stone of a pale, golden hue, which is its most common aspect; but in Ceylon, where it is very abundant, it is found in every variety of color, – amber, brown, red, blue, and sometimes having yellow and blue mingled in the same stone, forming a harlequin gem.

Galle has a large population of Moormen among its residents, who are generally dealers in gems, or engaged as manufacturing jewelers and practical lapidaries. As workers in tortoise-shell they have acquired great facility and exquisite skill. Calamander and sandal woods, ivory and ebony, are also wrought into delicate forms by these people, who are excellent cabinet-makers, and who with a few rude tools turn out very admirable work, imitating any desired model which is furnished for the purpose with admirable fidelity and beauty.

One of the pleasant excursions from Galle is by a fine road leading southeast among the undulating hills near the coast. The spot is known as the Hill of Wackwelle, is surrounded by cocoanut groves, and is often the resort of picnic parties from the port. A very fair house of refreshment is kept here, and the view from the elevation is extremely fine, embracing the valley of the Gindura, which winds its devious course to the sea near to Galle, irrigating the low-lying rice-fields, by means of artificial canals, for many miles. The mountain range of the central district is in full view.

South of Galle, along the shore to Dondra Head, the southern extreme of the island, the coast is lined with grand cocoanut palms, whose annual product is truly immense. Near to Belligam, situated on a bay of the same name, is a statue dedicated to an Indian prince, who is said to have taught the Singhalese the importance of cultivating this beautiful and profitable tree. Belligam is a large Singhalese village, inhabited mostly by fishermen and farmers, numbering perhaps four thousand souls, among whom are few if any Europeans. A beautiful feature of the shore in this neighborhood is the numerous river-mouths which empty into the sea from out the dense cocoanut woods. The bay is rich in corals and beautiful shells. Belligam was a famous resort of devout pilgrims in olden times, and there is still an ancient Buddhist temple here which is much visited by people from afar. In no other part of the world does the cocoanut palm flourish more luxuriantly than it does in this district. One intelligent writer estimates that the province lying between Dondra Head and Calpentyn contains between ten and twelve million fruitful palms. The productiveness of the cocoanut is most extraordinary. As long as the tree lives, it continues to bear; blossoms and ripe nuts are frequently seen on it at the same time. The natives have a saying here that it will not thrive beyond the sound of the human voice, and it is very certain that it is most fruitful and flourishing among the native cabins, where there is plenty of domestic refuse to enrich the ground about its roots. The fertilizing principle is not to be forgotten even in tropical regions.

This recalls the astute saying of a profound philosopher, who declared that Providence always turned the course of large and navigable rivers to run by big towns.

As regards healthfulness, the region round about Point de Galle can hardly be commended, and there are some local features not to be forgotten. Elephantiasis prevails among the natives, and leprosy is by no means unknown. Goitre is not uncommon among the native women, Europeans not being affected by it. In Switzerland, where the people so frequently suffer from goitre, it is attributed to drinking snow water; but some other cause must be found for its prevalence here. The most singular thing in connection with the strange guttural protuberance which this disease develops is that females only are liable to it; at least, this seems to be the case in this island. That leprosy is on the increase in Ceylon cannot be denied. There is a leper hospital four or five miles from Colombo, where between two and three hundred poor creatures afflicted with this disease are supported by the government. Besides this fact, it is well known that scores of lepers wander about the capital unrestrained. This is a serious reproach to the authorities. Published statistics show that there are nearly two thousand lepers living upon the island.

One other matter, in this connection, requires prompt attention. Vaccination should be made compulsory. In common with ignorant people wherever found, the Singhalese and Tamils object to this process of protection from what sometimes proves to be in Ceylon a sweeping pestilence before it runs itself out. The records of the island show terrible fatality from the visits of smallpox in past years, which might easily have been prevented.

CHAPTER XVII

Dondra Head. – "The City of the Gods." – A Vast Temple. – A Statue of Solid Gold. – A Famous Rock-Temple. – Buddhist Monastery. – Caltura and its Distilleries. – Edible Bird's Nests. – Basket-Making. – The Kaluganga. – Cinnamon Gardens. – "The City of Gems." – A Magnificent Ruby. – The True Cat's-Eye. – Vast Riches hidden in the Mountains. – Plumbago Mining. – Iron Ore. – Kaolin. – Gem-Cutting. – Native Swindlers. – Demoralizing Effect of Gem Digging.