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Updated: May 28, 2025
The country through which this road led us was flat, stale, but not unprofitable, since on either side were paddy-fields extending ad infinitum, studded here and there with clumps of palms.
The first part of the drive was not very interesting, the road passing only through paddy-fields and endless tea and coffee plantations. We reached Pusillawa about two o'clock, where we found a rough and ready sort of breakfast awaiting us. Thence we had a steep climb through some of the finest coffee estates in Ceylon, belonging to the Rothschilds, until we reached Rangbodde.
To the right lay the distant view of the low country, stretching into an undefined distance, until the land and sky appeared to melt together. Below, at a depth of about three thousand feet, the river boiled through the rocky gorge until it reached the village of Peréwellé at the base of the line of mountains, whose cultivated paddy-fields looked no larger than the squares upon a chess-board.
Through the open doorways you saw the paddy-fields under water and the terraced hills, with every arable yard under cultivation. The air was hot and enervating. "The country of the clouds," as the Chinese term the province of Szechuen, does not belie its name. An elderly woman was in charge of the oven, and toddled about on her deformed feet as if she were walking on her heels.
In the country, the women share equally with their husbands and children in agricultural labours; early and late whole families may be seen in the paddy-fields transplanting rice, or superintending its irrigation, for which the undulating nature of the country affords great facility.
The general appearance of Hong Kong, from the sea, is picturesque and curious. That part of the Island on which the town is situated, is hilly, and, with the exception of the few paddy-fields already mentioned, presents no level space on which to build.
Almost on the margin of the lake, in the midst of meadows and paddy-fields, lies the town of San Diego. From it sugar, rice, coffee, and fruits are either exported or sold for a small part of their value to the Chinese, who exploit the simplicity and vices of the native farmers.
The plain down which we rode is of exceeding richness and highly cultivated, water being trained into the paddy-fields in the same way that everywhere prevails in China proper. Buffaloes were ploughing wearily plodding through mud and water up to their middles. We were now among the Shans, and those working in the fields were Shans, not Chinese.
After a few miles the hitherto dead level of the valley is broken by low hills of reddish clay, and here the stone paths merge into well-beaten trails that on reasonably level soil afford excellent wheeling. The hillsides are crowded with graves, which, instead of the sugar-loaf "ant hillocks" of the paddy-fields, assume the traditional horseshoe shape of the Chinese ancestral grave.
But tied up in a howdah he is quite safe." Jack paid no attention whatever to the half-caste's sneers and jeers: he had resolved to take his gruel without whining, and he bore everything in stoical silence. Two hours' march brought them to a clearing in the jungle, and the road ran between small paddy-fields.
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