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Oh for a glass of Newera Ellia water, the purest and best that ever flows, as it sparkles out of the rocks on the mountain-tops! what pleasure so perfect as a long, deep and undisturbed draught of such cold, clear nectar when the throat is parched with unquenchable thirst!
As I travelled from Kandy to Newera Ellia, and back again to Kandy by a different route, my impression of the picturesqueness and productiveness of the country was confirmed. There was one thing I did not see the blooming heather of my own Highlands. There is, I suppose, no country where all that is desirable can be obtained. It must be acknowledged Ceylon has its disadvantages.
Situated at an elevation of 6,200 feet above the sea is Newera Ellia, the sanatorium of the island. The principal features of this country being a series of wild marsh, plains, forests, torrents, mountains and precipices, a peculiar hound is required for the sport. A pack of thoroughbred fox-hounds would never answer.
Two miles farther on, after a walk through undulating forest, the Horton Plains burst suddenly upon the view as you emerge from the jungle path. These plains are nearly 800 feet higher than Newera Ellia, or 7,000 feet above the sea.
This is the case at Newera Ellia, where the nillho blossom induces such a general rush of this particular bee to the district that the jungles are swarming with them in every direction, although during the six preceding years hardly a bee of the kind is to be met with. There are many varieties of the nillho.
From June to November the south-west monsoon brings wind and mist across the Newera Ellia mountains. Clouds of white fog boil up from the Dimboola valley like the steam from a huge cauldron, and invade the Newera Ellia plain through the gaps in the mountains to the westward.
After a long run one day, the pack having gone off in this fatal direction, I was determined, at any price, to hunt them up, and accordingly I went some miles down the Badulla road to the limestone quarries, which are five miles from the Newera Ellia plain.
There are many small farmers, or rather gardeners, at Newera Ellia who have succeeded uncommonly well. One of the emigrants who left my service returned to England in three years with three hundred pounds; and all the industrious people succeed. I am now without one man whom I brought out.
It was a great loss, as he was so tame that he might have been domesticated and driven to Newera Ellia without the slightest trouble. All this was occasioned by the cowardice of these villainous Cingalese, and upon my lecturing one fellow on his conduct he began to laugh.
Passes from the mountains which form the wall-like boundaries of this table-land descend to the low country in various directions. The whole of the Ouva district upon the one side, and of the Kotmalee district on the other side, of tilt Newera Ellia range of mountains, are, with the exception of the immediate neighborhood of Kandy and Colombo, the most populous districts of Ceylon.
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