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Jaffna is over two hundred miles from Colombo by land, and is peopled mostly by Tamils, who have a record connected with their settlement here reaching back for many centuries. The population of the entire peninsula is recorded as being about two hundred thousand, to meet whose spiritual wants there are said to be three hundred Hindu temples in this northern province.
The Dutch took advantage of this facility, and gave every encouragement to the cultivation of silk at Jaffna , but it never attained such a development as to become an article of commercial importance.
As before intimated, the Tamil women are far handsomer in features than the Singhalese race. The Jaffna peninsula has been peopled by the Tamil race for two thousand years or more. Point Pedro is a small town, and the harbor does not deserve the name, being only an open roadstead sheltered by a coral reef, where a number of vessels of moderate size are nearly always to be seen.
A very repulsive spectacle is exhibited in the markets of Jaffna by the mode in which the flesh of the turtle is sold piece-meal, whilst the animal is still alive, by the families of the Tamil fishermen.
Jaffna is a great centre of American missionary work, and is also the see of a Roman Catholic bishop. The American mission was begun here as early as 1816, and has gone onward ever since, increasing in its schools, chapels, and the number of instructors. An excellent work consummated here, in connection with the American mission, is the establishment of a Medical Bureau.
In this Jaffna district, goats' milk is made into excellent cheese. All along the shore in this neighborhood the bottom of the sea is formed of pure white sand, and is as level as a parlor floor, while the water is so clear that any object is distinctly seen below its surface.
A gentleman who was formerly in the British service at Ceylon, relates the following anecdote: "I was at Jaffna, at the northern extremity of the island of Ceylon, in the beginning of the year 1819, when, one morning, my servant called me an hour or two before my usual time, with 'Master, master! people sent for master's dogs; leopard in the town! My gun chanced not to be put together; and while my servant was adjusting it, the collector and two medical men, who had recently arrived, in consequence of the cholera morbus having just then reached Ceylon from the continent, came to my door, the former armed with a fowling-piece, and the two latter with remarkably blunt hog spears.
Then one might go southward from Jaffna, past Aripo, and the Gulf of Calpentyn, until the curious reef of Adam's Bridge was reached, which almost connects Ceylon with India.
The streets of the town are wide and regular, shaded by an abundance of handsome tulip-trees. There are at least forty thousand people living in and immediately around Jaffna. It has a certain oriental look, especially in the quarters where the native bazaars are situated, thronged by copper-colored men and women. This region is well wooded, the predominating tree being the palmyra palm.
Wolf was a native of Mecklenburg, who arrived in Ceylon about 1750, as chaplain in one of the Dutch East Indiamen, and having been taken into the government employment, he served for twenty years at Jaffna, first as Secretary to the Governor, and afterwards in an office the duties of which he describes to be the examination and signature of the "writings which served to commence a suit in any of the Courts of justice."
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