ging him at full speed across any open ground that presented itself, was enough to have enraged any other mortal. The man used indeed occasionally to look at me with a piteous imploring air, as if inquiring "what am I to do?" but I never once saw him strike or revenge himself on the pony in any way; and I feel convinced a considerable amount of affection existed between the two.

According to the Cingalese doctrine of metempsychosis, the spirits that have behaved badly in the human shape, are shifted into the form of some domestic animal, and those that have done well, into that of a wild animal; the most dreaded of all changes being that into a woman. If ever, in the course of these transmigrations, the spirit of Punchy animates the bulk and might of an elephant, he will be a "rogue" of the worst description, and I can only pity those sportsmen or villagers that chance to fall in his way. I have been thus tedious and particular in my description of Punchy and his peculiarities, as a very considerable amount of my amusement, as well as annoyance, during the trip, arose from his vagaries; and I am convinced the coolies will remember the "thin Sahib's" (as I was christened) pony, long after all remembrance of the "thin Sahib" himself has faded from their minds.

CHAPTER IV.

STAGE TO KANDY-RAILROADS-ROADS IN CEYLON-KANDY

MONSOONS.

We left Colombo without many regrets; for, as I before observed, but for the hospitality of its residents, it is as stupid a place as I ever visited. In travelling in the East, it is always considered advisable to start at some unnatural hour in the morning, and the Colombo and Kandy coach abided by that general rule. If the stage from Galle to Colombo was badly horsed, and the horses badly treated, that from Colombo to Kandy was a hundred degrees worse: more gross ignorance in the management of the noble animal itself, and more wilful cruelty, I never saw practised. In England I should have had the greatest satisfaction in handing over every driver and horse-keeper that drove and abused the horses during the ten or twelve stages from Colombo to Kandy, to the "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” and I should have done so with a perfect confidence in their conviction.

A mile or two from Colombo the road crosses a bridge of boats over some river with an unpronounceable name; the tolls on the bridge clear between four and five thousand a-year, from the number of bullock-carts that pass over it, ascending with rice, and descending with coffee. A railroad from Kandy to Colombo has for years been mooted and discussed, and finally referred to the Home Government; it could not fail, I think, to be of immense service to the planters, as affording them the means of importing their rice and exporting their coffee at a much cheaper rate than at present.

I fancy no railroad has yet been constructed which has not greatly increased the traffic of the country through which it passes, and I think there can be little doubt that it would operate in the same beneficial manner in Ceylon. However, colonial statesmen are, in no part of the world that I am acquainted with, much famed for independence or celerity in legislation, and notwithstanding its being acknowledged on all hands that the railroad is a desirable undertaking, it is yet more than probable that, together with many other advantageous projects, it may be deferred to the Greek kalends. The rents of the bridges alone, amounting to several thousands of pounds, offer a very fair

foundation on which to construct calculations for any amount of increase in the traffic.

For the first twenty miles the road is very flat, running through fields of paddy, and native villages, and cocoa groves, displaying the usual amount of children and pigs; the second twenty miles undulates through a mountainous and very picturesque country; and the last twenty, in which the road ascends some two thousand feet, almost approaches grandeur in its scenery. It certainly is a very beautiful drive, and if it was twenty, instead of seventy miles, it could not easily be exceeded; but seventy miles is too much, and long before the traveller has completed the first forty miles, exhausted nature begins to yearn and grumble, and when ascending the most beautiful part, one is, I am afraid, more apt to wonder how much longer the coach is to ascend at a foot's pace, and why on earth the engineers did not make the ascent easier, &c. &c., than to be enchanted and engrossed with scenery that, in reality, is most noble.

It has been very much the fashion of late years to extol the roads of Ceylon in comparison with those of India, and certainly there can be no doubt whatever of their immense superiority, both in extent and formation; but then it must be remembered that the two finest roads in the island,

viz. that from Galle to Colombo, and that from Colombo to Kandy, made during the governorship of Sir Edward Barnes, were constructed entirely by travaux forcés, or impressed labour; a means of improvement and progress the government of India has never possessed. Surveyorships and inspectorships of roads are very popular appointments in Ceylon, and when one considers the number of the staff employed, and the amount of capital and jobbing engaged in that service, one sees that it could only be the result of the grossest possible negligence if the trunk lines were not good. You hear of men in difficulties, from extravagance or misfortune, having "taken to the road" much in the same language, only in a different sense, that broken-down gentlemen did some hundred years ago. A career on the Ceylon roads is, however, more certain in its profits, and does not necessarily finish up with a pas seul on the slack rope, à la Claude Duval

In days gone by, the Cingalese were the unwilling pioneers of the splendid roads I have mentioned; and, though they must by this time be fully alive to their pecuniary advantages, it appears as though, in these days of liberty, they will not stir one finger, or give one pice, to keep them in order; this is done entirely by Malabar coolies, paid and organized by government. Out of the hundreds