OVERLAND ROUTE-POINT DE GALLE-EARLY NAVIGATORS-CINGALESE
COSTUME-" TERTIUM QUIDS"-JEWELS.

I KNOW of no spot in either hemisphere, where
tropical nature indulges in more marvellous re-
dundancy than at Point de Galle; and after the
sun-dried regions successively brought under the
notice of the overland traveller, this luxuriance
becomes still more remarkable. Malta is less
vegetable than Gibraltar, Suez more sapless than
either; and, excepting the Oasis of Cairo, and a
distant view of the serpentine valley of the Nile,
there is actually not a green spot from the Needles
to the Strait of Babelmandel. When, after ten
dreary, stifling days in the Red Sea, the passenger
is landed at that culminating point of desolation
(in this planet, at least), the Crater of Aden, the
bias of his mind, as regards the gorgeous East,

B

will have been disturbed, the current of his imagination dried up, and he will probably return to his steamer with the disagreeable conviction that he is the victim of misplaced confidence, that tropical luxuriance is a humbug, and that he and his companions are the only green things he is likely to see, until he finds his way back to less husky and more aqueous climes. I don't suppose any two places on the globe's surface illustrate more strongly than Aden and Point de Galle, the partiality with which nature has distributed her blessings. One might imagine the former to have been totally overlooked when vegetation was being served out; while it seems as though Pan, Pales, Flora, or Pomona, or whoever was entrusted with that duty, had, in a frolicsome spirit of exuberant generosity, emptied the cornucopia of vegetation intended for a whole continent, on the summit of the latter. It is literally smothered in verdant luxuriance, which heaped, massed, jumbled together in indescribable profusion, is barely restrained within its natural limits by the envious waves of the opposing ocean. At the entrance of the harbour are three or four detached rocks, on which some cocoa palms have established themselves, and there, without any nourishment, apparently, but the salt brine, they flourish and bear fruit, and remind the

scholar of the Isolated Rock of Charybdis, on whose "crown," as Palinurus in blank verse poetically informed Æneas,

"A fig's green branches rise

And shoot a lofty forest to the skies."

The harbour at Point de Galle is small, and not too secure, and the entrance narrow and intricate. Plans ad nauseam for improving it have been proposed, discussed, and deferred, but nothing has as yet been done. The subject, formerly one of almost local interest, is now of considerable public importance. Galle is a harbour of great and increasing resort: no less than a dozen steamers coal there regularly every month, besides numerous stray visitors.

The more one reads of the early maritime discoveries in both hemispheres, the more astonished one becomes at the almost invariable good fortune that attended the first navigators, and enabled them successfully to brave shoals and currents, monsoons and hurricanes, which even in these days of screws and paddle-wheels, are encircled by dangers and difficulties of no slight nature. Within the incredibly short space of twenty years from the landing of Vasco de Gama on the west coast of India, Almeida, Perez, Castro, Albuquerque, and others, explored the coasts of Java, Malacca, Ceylon, India, and Siam, making settle

ments and founding factories in all these countries; and it was not until they attempted to penetrate into the Celestial empire, that they came to a land where they were not only unwelcome, but where the men with "long beards and large eyes were viewed in the light of enemies. The exploits of the Portuguese adventurers of the sixteenth century in the eastern hemisphere lose nothing by comparison with those of their rivals, the Spaniards, in the west. Lorenzo d'Almeida, a companion of Camoëns and Vasco de Gama, one of that gallant band I have mentioned, who, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, succeeded, by their energy and selfdevotion, in creating a golden age, though a transient one, for Portugal, stumbled upon Point de Galle, in his voyage from Calicut to the Laccadives, or Hundred Thousand Isles, and by that accident brought to the world's notice a most fertile island, and cast amongst scholars and antiquarians an apple of discord, that has proved a most fruitful source of discussion and debate.

However interesting it may be to such literati to determine whether Ceylon is actually the land of Dedan alluded to by the Prophets, or whether it is the island of Taprobăne, mentioned by Ovid, to the passing traveller it is probably a

*

* Ex. Pont. 8-Ec. 5. v. 80.

matter of considerable indifference. He cannot help remarking, however, that the words both of Ezekiel, ("Men of Dedan were thy merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thine hand: they brought thee for a present horns of ivory and ebony;" chap. xxvii. 15,) and of Jeremiah, ("Flee ye, turn back, dwell deep, O inhabitants of Dedan;" chap. xlix. 9,) imply an amount of nautical proficiency in the inhabitants of that day, which to those of the present is totally wanting.

The Cingalese of the 19th century A.D. are no sailors, whatever they may have been in the 9th century B.C.; and if they had now to undertake a voyage to the Red Sea, I imagine they would find considerable difficulty in effecting any insurance under 100 per cent.

With the exception of the old Dutch fort, (which answers very well the purpose for which such buildings seem to serve in the colonies, namely, that of keeping her Majesty's troops and the civil employés some fifteen degrees hotter than they would otherwise be,) I fancy the Bay presents much the same appearance now as it did in those distant ages to which I have alluded.

very

The "forest primeval" still contends with the ocean for the possession of the sandy shore, and canoes, almost as primeval, with outriggers and sails of the simplest nature, and paddlers in the