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From Colombo it is but seventy-five miles to Ceylon's ancient capital, and the journey thither is picturesque almost beyond description. For fifty miles the railway leads through the rich vegetation of the lowlands, with groves of cocoanut palms seemingly as boundless as the sea.
The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, walked by himself, smoking a short pipe which was very far from suggesting the spicy breezes that blow soft from Ceylon's isle. I suppose everybody who reads this paper has visited one or more observatories, and of course knows all about them.
In range of latitude, in temperature and in rainfall, North Borneo presents many points of resemblance to Ceylon, and it was at first thought that it might be possible to attract to the new country some of the surplus capital, energy and aptitude for planting which had been the foundation of Ceylon's prosperity.
"What though the spicy breezes blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle" an eloquent line, an incomparable line; it says little, but conveys whole libraries of sentiment, and Oriental charm and mystery, and tropic deliciousness a line that quivers and tingles with a thousand unexpressed and inexpressible things, things that haunt one and find no articulate voice . . . . Colombo, the capital.
When the spicy breezes began to blow soft as those of Ceylon's isle over the river and every whiff talked Turkey, the population of Dunderbunk listened to the wooing and began to follow its several noses snubs, beaks, blunts, sharps, piquants, dominants, fines, bulgies, and bifids on the way to the several households which those noses adorned or defaced.
Here wuz a Victoria lily in its full beauty, the dark green leaves edged with brown and red, as big round as our washtub, and turned up on the edges about two inches. Each plant has one leaf and one flower. And we see the most lovely orchids here; Dorothy thought them the most beautiful of all. Well, in a day or two we sot out for Ceylon's isle.
If Ceylon's isle, that bears the bleeding trees, With any perfume load the Orient breeze, If Heber's Muse, by Ceylon as he sailed, A pleasant odor from the shore inhaled, More lives in me; for underneath my lid A sweetness as of sacrifice is hid.
My eyes flew to the side where land lay, but I saw only a blurred line covering three-quarters of the horizon from southwest to northwest. Going up Ceylon's west coast during the night, the Nautilus lay west of the bay, or rather that gulf formed by the mainland and Mannar Island.
It had been a delightful voyage, with pleasant fellow-passengers and everything new and exciting, to the strong, well-grown, healthy lad, who had enjoyed the Mediterranean; revelled in the glowing heat of the Red Sea, where he had begun to be the regular companion of the young doctor who had charge of the passengers and crew; stared at that great cinder-heap Aden, and later on sniffed at the sweet breezes from Ceylon's Isle.
The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, walked by himself, smoking a short pipe which was very far from suggesting the spicy breezes that blow soft from Ceylon's isle. I suppose everybody who reads this paper has visited one or more observatories, and of course knows all about them.
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