From Adam's Peak to Elephanta

Imagine a blue-green ribbon of water some 60 yards wide, then rough sandy dunes 10 or 20 feet high, and then beyond, the desert, burning yellow in the sun—here and there partly covered with scrub, but for the most part seeming quite bare; sometimes flat and stony, sometimes tossed and broken, sometimes in great drifts and wreaths of sand, just like snowdrifts, delicately ribbed by the wind—the whole stretching away for miles, scores of miles, not a moving form visible, till it is bounded on the horizon by a ridge of hills of the most ethereal pink under an intense blue sky. Such is the view to the east of us now, as we pass through the Suez Canal (19th October, 1890). To the west the land looks browner and grayer; some reeds mark a watercourse, and about 10 miles off appears a frowning dark range of bare hills about 2,000 feet high, an outlying spur of the hills (Jebel Attákah) that bound the Gulf of Suez.

In such a landscape one of the signal stations, with its neat tiled cottage and flagstaff, and a few date palms and perhaps a tiny bit of garden, is quite an attraction to the eye. These stations are placed at intervals of about 6 miles all along the canal. They serve to regulate the traffic, which is now enormous, and continuous night and day. The great ships nearly fill the waterway, so that one has to be drawn aside and moored in order to let another pass; and though they are not allowed to go faster than 4 miles an hour they create a considerable wave in their rear, which keeps washing down the banks. Tufts of a reedy grass have been planted in places to hold the sand together; but the silt is very great, and huge steam-dredges are constantly at work to remove it. Here and there on the bank is a native hut of dry reeds—three sides and a flat top—just a shelter from the sun; or an Arab tent, with camels tethered by the leg around it. At Kantarah the caravan track from Jerusalem—one of the great highways of the old world—crosses the canal; there are a few wood and mud huts, and it is curious to see the string of laden camels and the Arabs in their unbleached cotton burnouses coming down—just as they might be coming down from the time of Father Abraham—and crossing the path of this huge modern steamship, with its electric lights and myriad modern appliances, the Kaiser Wilhelm now going half-way round the globe.

The desert does not seem quite devoid of animal life; at any rate along the canal side you may see tracks in the sand of rabbits and hares, occasional wagtail-like birds by the water, a few crows hovering above, or a sea-gull, not to mention camels and a donkey or two, or a goat. Near Port Said they say the lagoons are sometimes white with flocks of pelicans and flamingoes, but we passed there in the night. It was fine to see the electric light, placed in the bows, throwing a clear beam and illuminating the banks for fully half a mile ahead, as we slowly steamed along. The driven sand looked like snow in the bluish light. The crescent moon and Venus were in the sky, and the red signal lights behind us of Port Said.

The canal is 90 miles long, and a large part of it follows the bed of a very ancient canal which is supposed to have connected the two seas. It appears that there is a very slight movement of the water through it from south to north.

We are now nearing Suez, and the heat is so great that it reverberates from the banks as from a furnace; of course the deck is under an awning. The remains of a little village built of clay appears, but the huts have broken down, split by the fierce sun-rays, and some light frame-houses, roofed and walled with shingles, have taken their place.

Gulf of Suez.—The town of Suez is a tumbledown little place, narrow lanes and alleys; two-storied stone houses mostly, some with carved wooden fronts, and on the upper floors lattice-work, behind which I suppose the women abide. Some nice-looking faces in the streets, but a good many ruffians; not so bad though as Port Said, where the people simply exist to shark upon the ships. In both places an insane medley of Arabs, fellahs, half-castes and Europeans, touts, guides, donkey-boys, etc., and every shade of dress and absurd hybrid costume, from extreme Oriental to correct English; ludicrous scenes of passengers going on shore, ladies clinging round the necks of swarthy boatmen; donkey-boys shouting the names of their donkeys—“Mr. Bradlaugh, sir, very fine donkey,” “Mrs. Langtry,” “Bishop of London,” etc.; fearful altercations about claimed baksheesh; parties beguiled into outlying quarters of the town and badly blackmailed; refusals of boatmen to take you back to the ship while the very gong of departure is sounding; and so forth. Suez however has a little caravan and coasting trade of its own, besides the railway which now runs thence to Cairo, and has antique claims to a respectability which its sister city at the other end of the canal cannot share.

Now that we are out in the gulf, the sea is deep blue, and very beautiful, the rocks and mountains along the shore very wild and bare, and in many parts of a strong red color. This arm of the Red Sea is about 150 miles long, and I think not more than 20 miles wide at any point; in some places it is much less. We pass jutting capes and islands quite close on the west of us—great rocky ravine-cut masses absolutely bare of vegetation. On the east—apparently about 10 miles distant, but very clear—stands an outlying range of Sinai—Jebel Sirbal by name—looks about 5,000 or 6,000 feet high, very wild and craggy, many of the peaks cloven at the summit and gaping as if with the heat; farther back some higher points are visible, one of which is probably Jebel Musa. A most extraordinary land; at some places one can discern—especially with the aid of a glass—large tracts or plains of loose sand, miles in extent, and perfectly level, except where they wash up in great drifts against the bases of the mountains. Across these plains tall dark columns can be distinguished slowly traveling—the dreaded sand-clouds borne on eddies of the wind.

Indian Ocean, Oct. 25th.—Much cooler now. In the Red Sea, with thermometer at 90° in the cabins, heat was of course the absorbing topic. Everybody mopping; punkahs in full swing. I believe the water there frequently reaches 90° F., and sometimes 95°; but here it is quite cool, probably not much over 60°, and that alone makes a great difference. It is a queer climate in the Red Sea: there seems to be always a haze, due to dust blown from the shores; at the same time the air is very damp, owing to the enormous evaporation, clothes hung up get quite wet, and there are heavy dews. When the wind is aft the oppression from the heat is sometimes so great that ships have to be turned back and steamed against the breeze; but even so casualties and deaths are not uncommon. Owing to the haze, and the breadth of the Red Sea which is as much as 200 miles in parts, little is seen of the shores. A few rocky islands are passed, and a good many awkward reefs which the passengers know nothing of. The Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb are curious. The passage between the Island of Perim and the Arabian mainland is quite narrow, only a mile or two wide; tossed wild-looking hills on the mainland, 3,000 or 4,000 feet high, with French fortifications. The island itself lower and more rounded, with English fort and lighthouse; but looking very black and bare, though owing to the moisture there is some kind of stunted heathery stuff growing on it. There are a few English here, and a native town of waggon-like tents clustered round the fort; some little fishing and sailing boats along the shores. Turning eastwards along the south coast of Arabia the same awful land meets the eye as in the Gulf of Suez. A continual cloud of dust flies along it, through which one discerns sandy plains, and high parched summits beyond. There must however be water in some parts of this region, as it is back from here in this angle of Arabia that Mocha lies and the coffee is grown.

Colombo.—I fear that the Red Sea combined with mutual boredom had a bad effect on the passengers’ tempers, for terrible dissensions broke out; and after six days of the Indian Ocean, during which the only diversions were flying-fish outside and scandal-mongering inside the ship, it was a relief to land on the palm-fringed coast of Ceylon. The slender catamarans—or more properly outrigged canoes—manned by dusky forms, which come to take you ashore, are indeed so narrow that it is impossible to sit inside them! They are made of a “dug-out” tree-trunk (see frontispiece), with parallel bulwarks fastened on only 10 inches or a foot apart; across the bulwarks a short board is placed, and on that you can sit. Two arms projecting on one side carry a float or light fish-shaped piece of wood, which rests on the water 8 feet or so from the canoe, and prevents the vessel from capsizing, which it would otherwise infallibly do. Impelled by oars, or by a sail, the boat bounds over the water at a good speed; and the mode of traveling is very pleasant. There is no necessity however to embark in these frail craft, for respectable civilised boats, and even steam-launches, abound; we are indeed in an important and busy port.

A great granite mole, built five years ago, has converted an open roadstead into a safe and capacious harbor, and there is now probably no place in the East better supplied with mails and passenger boats than Colombo. It is the calling place for the great lines of steamers en route for Australia, for China and Japan, and for Calcutta and Burmah, not to mention smaller coasting boats from the mainland of India, and so forth. The city itself has only the slightest resemblance to a European town. There is a fort certainly, and a Government House, and barracks with a regiment of infantry (part of whom however are generally up country); there are two or three streets of two or even three-storied houses, with shops, banks, mercantile offices, etc.; a few hotels and big goods stores, a lighthouse, and a large engineering works, employing some hundreds of Cinghalese and Tamil operatives; and then you have done with the English quarter. The land is flat, and round about the part just described stretch open grass-covered spaces, and tree-fringed roads, with the tiny booths or huts of the darkies on both sides of them. Here and there are knots and congeries of little streets and native markets with multifarious life going on in them. Here is a street of better built cottages or little villas belonging to Eurasians—the somewhat mixed descendants of old Dutch and Portuguese settlers—small one or seldom two-storied houses of stuccoed brick, with a verandah in front and a little open court within, clustering round an old Dutch church of the 17th century. Here is the residential quarter of the official English and of the more aspiring among the natives—the old Cinnamon Gardens, now laid out in large villa-bungalows and private grounds. Here again is a Roman Catholic church and convent, or the grotesque façade of a Hindu temple; and everywhere trees and flowering shrubs and, as one approaches the outskirts of the town, the plentiful broad leaves of coco-palms and bananas overshadowing the roads. Nor in any description of Colombo should the fresh-water lake be forgotten, which ramifying and winding in most intricate fashion through the town, and in one place coming within a hundred yards of the sea, surprises one continually with enchanting glimpses. I don’t know any more delightful view of its kind—all the more delightful because so unexpected—than that which greets the eye on entering the Fort Railway Station at Colombo. You pass through the booking-office and find yourself on a platform, which except for the line of rails between might be a terrace on the lake itself; a large expanse of water with wooded shores and islands, interspersed with villas, cottages and cabins, lies before you; white-sailed boats are going to and fro; groups of dark figures, waist-deep in water, are washing clothes; children are playing and swimming in the water; and when, as I saw it once, the evening sun is shining through the transparent green fringe of banana palms which occupies the immediate foreground, and the calm lake beyond reflects like a mirror the gorgeous hues of sky and cloud, the scene is one which for effects of color can hardly be surpassed.

Up and down these streets and roads, and by the side of this lake, and along the seashore and through the quays and docks, goes, as may be imagined, a most motley crowd. The Cinghalese and the Tamils are of course the most numerous, but besides these there are Mahomedans—usually called Moor-men here—and some Malays. The English in Ceylon may be divided into three classes: the official English, the planters, and the small trading English (including employees on railway and other works). Then there are the anglicised native gentry, Cinghalese or Tamil, some of whom occupy official positions, and who largely adopt European dress and habits; the non-anglicised ditto, who keep to their own ways and costume, and are not much seen in public; the Dutch Eurasians, many of whom become doctors or solicitors (proctors); and the Portuguese, who are frequently traders in a small way.

Specimens of all these, in their different degrees of costume and absence of costume, may be seen in Colombo, as indeed in almost any place in Ceylon which can be dignified with the name of a town.

Here for instance is a great big Moor-man with high fez of plaited grass, baggy white pants and turned-up shoes; a figured vest on his body, and red shawl thrown over one shoulder. [He is probably a well-to-do shopkeeper; not an agreeable face, but I find the Mahomedans have a good reputation for upright dealing and fidelity to their word.]

Here a ruddy-brown Cinghalese man, with hairy chest, and nothing on but a red loin-cloth, carrying by a string an earthenware pot, probably of palm-beer. [A peasant. The Cinghalese are generally of this color, whereas the Tamils tend towards black, though shading off in the higher castes to an olive tint.]

Another Cinghalese, dressed all in white, white cotton jacket and white cloth hanging to below the knees, with elegant semicircular tortoise-shell comb on his head; a morbidly sensitive face with its indrawn nose and pouting lips. [Possibly a private servant, or small official of one of the courts, or Arachchi. The comb is a great mark of the low-country Cinghalese. They draw the hair backwards over the head and put the comb on horizontally, like an incomplete crown, with its two ends sticking up above the forehead—very like horns from a front view! The hair is then fastened in a knot behind, or sometimes left hanging down the back. This is a somewhat feeble face, but as a rule one may say that the Cinghalese are very intelligent. They make excellent carpenters and mechanics. Are generally sensitive and proud.]

Here come two Englishmen in tweed suits and tennis shoes—their umbrellas held carefully by the middle—apparently of the planter community, young, but rather weedy looking, with an unsteady, swimmy look about the eyes which I fear is not uncommon among the planters; I have seen it already well-developed in a mere boy of eighteen.

Here a dozen or so of chetties (a Tamil commercial caste), with bare shaven and half-shaven heads, brown skins, and white muslins thrown gracefully round their full and sleek limbs; the sacred spot marked on their foreheads, red betel in their mouths, and avarice in their faces.

There a Tamil coolie or wage-worker, nearly naked except for a handkerchief tied round his head, with glossy black skin and slight yet graceful figure.

Here a pretty little girl of nine or so, with blue beads round her neck, and the usual white cotton jacket and colored petticoat or çilai of the Cinghalese women, walking with a younger brother.

Here three young Eurasian girls in light European costume and straw hats, hair loose or in pigtails down their backs, very pretty. [They are off for a walk along the Galle Face promenade by the sea, as the heat of the day is now past.]

Here also an English lady, young and carefully dressed, but looking a little bored, driving in her pony-trap to do some shopping, with a black boy standing behind and holding a sunshade over her.

One of the features of Colombo are the jinrickshaws, or light two-wheeled gigs drawn by men, which abound in the streets. These Tamil fellows, in the lightest of costumes, their backs streaming under the vertical sun, bare-legged and often bare-headed, will trot with you in a miraculous way from one end of Colombo to the other, and for the smallest fee. Tommy Atkins delights to sit thus lordly behind the toiling “nigger.” At eventide you may see him and his Eurasian girl—he in one jinrickshaw and she in another—driving out to the Galle Face Hotel, or some such distant resort along the shore of the many-sounding ocean. The Tamils are mostly slight and graceful in figure, and of an active build. Down at the docks they work by hundreds, with nothing on beyond a narrow band between the thighs, loading and unloading barges and ships—a study of the human figure. Some of them of course are thick and muscular, but mostly they excel in a kind of unconscious grace and fleetness of form as of the bronze Mercury of Herculaneum, of which they often remind me. Their physiognomy corresponds with their bodily activity; the most characteristic type that I have noticed among them has level brows, and eyes deep-set (and sometimes a little close together), straight nose, and well-formed chin. They are a more enterprising pushing and industrious people than the Cinghalese, eager and thin, skins often very dark, with a concentrated, sometimes demonish, look between the eyes—will-power evidently present—but often handsome. Altogether a singular mixture of enterprise with demonic qualities; for occultism is rife among them, from the jugglery of the lower castes to the esoteric philosophy and speculativeness of the higher. The horse-keepers and stable boys in Ceylon are almost all Tamils (of a low caste), and are a charming race, dusky active affectionate demons, fond of their horses, and with unlimited capacity of running, even over newly macadamised roads. The tea-coolies are also Tamils, and the road-workers, and generally all wage-laborers; while the Cinghalese, who have been longer located in the island, keep to their own little peasant holdings and are not at all inclined to come under the thumb of a master, preferring often indeed to suffer a chronic starvation instead.

The Tamil women are, like their lords, generally of a slighter build than the Cinghalese of the same sex, some indeed are quite diminutive. Among both races some very graceful and good-looking girls are to be seen, up to the age of sixteen or so, fairly bright even in manner; especially among the Cinghalese are they distinguished for their fine eyes; but at a later age, and as wives, they lose their good looks and tend to become rather heavy and brutish.

The contrast between the Cinghalese and the Tamils is sufficiently marked throughout, and though they live on the island on amicable terms there is as a rule no love lost between them. The Cinghalese came to Ceylon, apparently from the mainland of India, somewhere in the 6th century B.C., and after pushing the aborigines up into the woods and mountains (where some of them may yet be found), occupied the whole island. It was not long however before the Tamils followed, also from India; and since then, and through a long series of conflicts, the latter have maintained their position, and now form the larger part of the population in the north of the island, while the Cinghalese are most numerous in the south. Great numbers of Tamil peasants—men, women, and children—still come over from the mainland every year, and go up-country to work in the tea-gardens, where there is a great demand for coolie labour.

In character the Cinghalese are more like the Italians, easy-going, reasonably idle, sensitive, shrewd, and just a bit romantic. Their large eyes and tortoise-shell combs and long hair give them a very womanly aspect; and many of the boys and youths have very girlish features and expressions. They have nearly always grace and dignity of manner, the better types decidedly handsome, with their well-formed large heads, short beards, and long black hair, composed and gentle, remindful of some pictures of Christ. In inferior types you have thick-featured, morbidly sensitive, and at the same time dull-looking persons. As a rule their frames are bigger and more fleshy than those of the Tamils, and their features less cleanly cut. Captain R. Knox, in his “Nineteen Years’ Captivity in the Kingdom of Conde Uda” (1681), says of them:—“In carriage and behaviour they are very grave and stately, like unto Portuguese; in understanding quick and apprehensive; in design, subtle and crafty; in discourse, courteous, but full of flatteries; naturally inclined to temperance both in meat and drink, but not to chastity; near and provident in their families, commending good husbandry.”

The Cinghalese are nearly all Buddhists, while the Tamils are Hindus. Buddhism was introduced into Ceylon about the 4th century B.C., and has flourished here ever since; and Buddhist rock-temples are to be found all over the island. The Tamils have a quite extensive literature of considerable antiquity, mostly philosophical or philosophical poetical; and their language is very rich in vocabulary as well as in its grammatical forms and inflexions—though very terse, with scanty terms of courtesy (“thank you,” “good-morning,” and such like), and a little harsh in sound, k’s and r’s flying through the teeth at a great rate. Cinghalese is much more liquid and pleasant in sound, and has many more Aryan words in it. In fact it is supposed to be an offshoot of Sanskrit, whereas Tamil seems to have no relation to Sanskrit, except that it has borrowed a good many words. The curious thing is that, so little related as races, the Tamils should have taken their philosophy, as they have done, from the Sanskrit Vedas and Upanishads, and really expressed the ideas if anything more compactly and systematically than the Sanskrit books do. Though poor in literature I believe, yet the Cinghalese has one of the best books of chronicles which exist in any language—the Mahawanso—giving a very reliable history of the race (of course with florid adornment of stupendous miracles, which can easily be stripped off) from their landing in Ceylon down to modern times. The Mahawanso was begun by Mahanamo, a priest, who about 460 A.D. compiled the early portion comprising the period from B.C. 543 to A.D. 301, after which it was continued by successive authors right down to British times, i.e., A.D. 1758!

There are two newspapers in Colombo printed in the Cinghalese language, one of which is called The Buddhist World; there is also a paper printed in Tamil; and there are three English newspapers. In “places of entertainment” Colombo (and the same is true of the towns in India) is very wanting. There is no theatre or concert-hall. It can be readily understood that though the population is large (120,000), it is so diverse that a sufficiently large public cannot be found to support such places. The native races have each their own festivals, which provide for them all they require in that way. The British are only few—5,000 in all Ceylon, including military, out of a population of over three millions; and even if the Eurasian population—who of course go in for Western manners and ideals—were added, their combined numbers would be only scanty. An occasional circus or menagerie, or a visit from a stray theatrical company on its way to Australia, is all that takes place in that line.

For the rest there is a Salvation Army, with thriving barracks, a Theosophist Society, a branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and various other little clubs representing different sections. Society is of course very much broken up into sections. Even the British, few as they are, are sadly divided by cliques and jealousies; the line between the official English and the “second-class” English is terribly severe (as indeed all over India); and between these again and the Eurasians. Even where Cinghalese or Tamil or Eurasian families of old standing attain important official positions, an insuperable stiffness still marks the intercourse between them and the British. “Ah!” said a planter to a young friend of mine who had just shaken hands rather cordially with a native gentleman, “Ah! my boy, you won’t do that when you’ve been here three years!” Thus a perfect social amalgamation and the sweetness of brethren dwelling together in unity are things still rather far distant in this otherwise lovely isle.

Talking about the beauty of the island, I was very much struck, even on my first landing, with its “spicy gales.” The air is heavy with an aromatic fragrance which, though it forced itself on my attention for three or four weeks before I got fairly accustomed to it, I have never been able to trace to any particular plant or shrub. It is perhaps not unlike the odor of the cinnamon leaf when bruised, but I don’t think it comes from that source. I am never tired of looking at the coco-nut palms; they grow literally by the million all along this coast to the north and south of Colombo. To the south the sea-shore road is overshadowed by them. I have been some miles along the road, and the belt of land, a hundred yards or so wide, between it and the sea, is thick with their stems right down to the water’s edge, over which they lean lovingly, for they are fond of the salt spray. On the other side of the road too they grow, and underneath them are little villas and farmsteads and tiny native cabins, with poultry and donkeys and humped cows and black pigs and brown children, in lively confusion; while groups of peasant men and women in bright-colored wraps travel slowly along, and the little bullock gigs, drawn by active little brahmin bulls with jingling bells, trot past at a pace which would do credit to an English pony—a scene which they say continues much the same the whole way to Galle (80 miles). These palms do not grow wild in Ceylon; they are all planted and cared for, whether in huge estates, or in the rood of ground which surrounds a Cinghalese cabin. The Cinghalese have a pretty saying that they cannot grow afar from the sound of the human voice. They have also a saying to the effect that a man only sees a straight coco-palm once in a lifetime. Many of the other kinds of palms grow remarkably straight, but this kind certainly does not. In a grove of them you see hundreds of the grey smooth stems shooting upwards in every fantastic curve imaginable, with an extraordinary sense of life and power, reminding one of the way in which a volley of rockets goes up into the air. Then at the height of 50 or 60 feet they break into that splendid crown of green plumes which sparkles glossy in the sun, and waves and whispers to the lightest breeze.

Along this palm-fringed and mostly low and sandy shore the waves break—with not much change of level in their tides—loudly roaring in the S.W. monsoon, or with sullen swell when the wind is in the N.E., but seldom altogether calm. A grateful breeze tempers the 90° of the thermometer. A clumsy-hulled lateen-sailed fishing boat is anchored in the shelter of a sandy spit; two or three native men and boys are fishing with rod and line, standing ankle-deep at the water’s edge. The dashing blue waves look tempting for a bathe, but the shore is comparatively deserted; not a soul is to be seen in the water, infested as it is by the all-dreaded shark. Only, 300 or 400 yards out, can be discerned the figure of a man—also fishing with a line—apparently standing up to his middle in water, but really sitting on a kind of primitive raft or boat, consisting of three or four logs of wood, slightly shaped, with upturned ends, and loosely tied together—the true catamaran (kattu maram, tied tree). The water of course washes up and around him, but that is pleasant on a hot day. He is safe from sharks; there is a slender possibility of his catching something for dinner; and there he sits, a relic of pre-Adamite times, while the train from Kalutara rushes by with a shriek to Colombo.