They are very cheap. I had one for three hours, for which I was charged two rupeesa little over three shillings-and was overwhelmed with thanks for a trifling and evidently unexpected pourboire. The horses are poor creatures, the real draught animal of Ceylon being a plump and well-shaped little bullock. These are yoked singly or in pairs to light waggons roofed with dried palmleaves, and can upon occasion get up quite a respectable trot. They are artistically branded, characters being stamped all over their sides. It is pretty to see a crawlera light, palm-thatched waggon, drawn by a pictorial bullock, driven by a man in a red turban and white robes-hailed by a native, who gets in behind, sits on the floor, with his feet dangling down, and is trotted off.

Bishop Heber's well-known description of Ceylon as a place

"Where every prospect pleases,

And only man is vile,"

is open to criticism on both assertions. There is much in Colombo which does not please, the town for the most part being squalid, dirty, and ill kept, the streets flanked by hovels, comparison with which is to be found only in the south-west of Ireland. On the other hand, both men and women, particularly

the latter, are strikingly handsome. It is not only their flashing black eyes, their wellshaped faces, or their graceful drapery that please the eye. They have the rarer gift of graceful carriage. A Ceylon girl walks like a young empress, if empresses are particularly good walkers. I use the simile in despair, since I do not know anything in common Western life that equals or approaches the manner of the commonest Ceylon woman in moving about the streets. It is the custom in the island to engage women as streetsweepers, and in the matter of what Mr. Turveydrop called deportment, it is a liberal education to watch one of them swaying the long, flexible brush of bamboo twigs.

Both men and women chew the betel-nut, which incidentally serves the purpose attained by other means by young girls in Japan, giving a red tint to their lips, an effect in some cases by no means unbecoming. In the country districts the men wear nothing but a pair of earrings and a narrow loin cloth. Taken in conjunction with the tall palms, leafless for twenty or thirty feet, and then breaking out into a tuft of green leaves, they realize, with gratifying fidelity, the picture on the cover of the Juvenile Missionary Magazine. In towns, and near them, men dress

generally in a single robe, thrown about them with infinite grace. One colour frequently

recurring in the gay procession was a dead gold, which, set against the tawny flesh and the straight, lithe figure, was a constant refreshment to the eye.

The first thing people do on arriving at Colombo is to take the train for Kandy; for which slight Colombo may find consolation in the reflection that if Kandy were the point of arrival visitors would rush off to the railwaystation to catch the earliest train for Colombo. There is nothing particular to see at Kandy, certainly nothing more than at Colombo, unless it be the Botanical Gardens. But the journey through the country is well worth taking, and affords a convenient opportunity of seeing the island. This is not marred by any undue rapidity on the part of the train, which takes four hours and a quarter to do the seventy-two miles. It should be added that the gradient is for half the way very steep, clambering the hills, and presenting a splendid view of the country.

I suppose Ceylon is green all the year round.. Certainly nothing could surpass its verdure in mid December. At Kandy rain falls on about two hundred days in the year, the annual rainfall being eighty-five inches. This is a bounti

ful supply; but the peculiar good fortune of Ceylon is that it is pretty equally divided throughout the year. Unlike India, the island knows no alternations of wet or dry seasons, with the earth green for so many months and bare brown for so many more. In October and November the north-east monsoon is blowing, and in June, when the south-west monsoon is taking its turn, the rains are heaviest. The dry season, such as it is, happens in February and March; but even then the earth is at no distant intervals refreshed with genial showers.

Ceylon, like some other members of the colonial family, has seen better days. For some years past its coffee crop has been unremunerative, and it is said many of the plantations are heavily mortgaged. This year the hearts of the planters are cheered by brighter results. There is more coffee, but prices are low, and on the whole planters are inclined with increased assiduity to extend the growth of the cinchona. This tree, from whose bark quinine is made, was only a few years ago introduced into the island, and great things are looked for from it. Tea is still steadily grown, and holds its high place in the market. Rice is another product, of which there are abundant signs on the journey from

Colombo to Kandy. The hill-sides for miles, far as the eye can reach, are carved out in terraces, on whose level the rice is sown. The water running down from the upper hills is dexterously trapped, and abundantly supplies each step of the terrace, an immense boon to the planter.

As the train slowly mounts the steep ascent, on the level height of which stands the capital of the old Kandian kings, the view grows in beauty, sometimes closely verging on grandeur. Below, a great dip in the circle of hills, is the green valley, with the water on the rice-fields glistening in the sun. Beyond is a range of hills, ever varying in shape as the train creeps higher; and all the way, sometimes within reach of hand, is a tropical wood, rich with cocoa-nut and banana-trees, glowing with the blood-red hybiscus, fair with countless wild flowers, and cool with fernclad rocks, down which musically trickles the bountiful water.

Kandy is a pretty town, with its white roads, its green foliage, its flowers, its lake, and its sentinel guard of mountains. In the native quarter, though the streets are broader, the houses and shops are not much better than in Colombo. Anything in the shape of four walls and a roof will do for the Cingalese