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Updated: May 19, 2025
I never explored the bottom of a river in this way, and I think it will be a long time before I make such a voyage. The diving bell has been used for a good many useful purposes to lay the foundations of docks and the piers of bridges; to collect pearls at Ceylon, and coral at other places. I am not sure but the diving bell is getting somewhat out of use now.
The natives have a superstitious belief that their flight is ultimately directed to Adam's Peak, and that their pilgrimage ends on reaching the sacred mountain. As yet no attempt has been made to describe the insects of Ceylon systematically, much less to enumerate the prodigous number of species that abound in every locality.
A writer in the Ceylon Miscellany mentions, that they are often to be seen "crossing rivers and frequently mud-brooks near Chilaw; the adjacent thickets affording them shelter, and their food consisting of aquatic reptiles, crabs, and mollusca." Hodgson describes as dwelling in burrows, and being carnivorous and ranivorous? Vide Journ. As. Soc. IV. RODENTIA. Squirrels.
A traveller in Ceylon saw his dogs set upon a rat, and making them relinquish it, he took it up by the tail, the dogs leaping after it the whole time; he carried it into his dining-room, to examine it there by the light of the lamp, during the whole of which period it remained as if it were dead; limbs hanging, and not a muscle moving.
In the year 1815, I accompanied a convoy of homeward-bound Indiamen from Ceylon, and a right merry part of the voyage it was while we ran down a couple of thousand miles of the south-east trade-wind; for these hospitable floating nabobs, the East India captains, seldom let a day pass without feasting one another; and we, their naval protectors, came in for no small share of the good things, for which we could make but a poor return.
In the same manner the larger kinds of serpents conceal themselves by day and wander forth at night, like all other reptiles except the smaller species of lizard, of which we have in Ceylon an immense variety, from the crocodile himself down to the little house-lizard.
When the tourist season was over, the steamer ran between London and Australia, stopping at Ceylon, and there Olsen sold the ivory to a Cingalese jeweller for two imitation sapphires. I found it under some rubbish in a house at Colombo, and have translated it from one end to the other.
"Schriften, I am his wife as for ever, in this world, and the next. You cannot blame me." "No," replied Schriften, "I do not blame, I admire you. I feel sorry. But, after all, what is death? Nothing. He! he!" and Schriften hastened away, and left Amine to herself. The Utrecht sailed from Gambroon, touched at Ceylon, and proceeded on her voyage in the Eastern seas.
There are two specimens in the British Museum collection, one of which has recently arrived from Amoy; of the other the locality is unknown. See GÜNTHER, Acanthopt. In addition to marine eels, in which the Indian coasts abound, Ceylon has some true fresh-water eels, which never enter the sea. These are known to the natives under the name of Theliya, and to naturalists by that of Mastacembelus.
Undoubtedly the huge square boxes which some of them carried aboard so easily upon their heads contained tea, for which Ceylon is famous. The person in charge of the landing-field here was a Mr. Young, an American clergyman connected with the local Baptist mission.
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