The Bungalow and the Tent: or, a visit to Ceylon

Front matter

THE BUNGALOW AND THE TENT. LONDON ! R. CLAY, PRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL. THE BUNGALOW AND THE TENT; OB, A VISIT TO CEYLON. BY EDWARD SULLIVAN, AUTHOR. OP "KAMBLES AND SCRAMBLES IN AMERICA." LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY. PUBLISHER IN ORDINARY TO HER MAJESTY. 1854. DEDICATED TO LADY SULLIVAN, BY HER AFFECTIONATE SON. PEEEACE. Bacon announced some centuries ago, that Nature had ceased to dispense novelties. " Nothing new can be either found or done, read or related : nothing new but as the moon is new, the old moon with her face turned the other way." Time has endorsed this observation, and the truth of the venerable saw touching the superiority of "old books, old wine, old friends, and old ," (I forget the fourth, but don't think it is " old women,") becomes daily more patent. The following pages consequently cannot be expected to contain anything new, otherwise than as an old picture in a fresh light is new.

Preface

. VIII Coffee-planting and Buddhism, elephant shooting and leeches, are probably as familiar to many as cricket or crotchet. " Friend, be not tedious," said the Rajah of Travancore to a Christian missionary, in the sixteenth century, **remember life is short." I have endeavoured to pay due attention to this admirable advice; and if what I have written be wearisome, the offence can scarcely be visited on the quantity. It has been laid to the charge of many authors, " that they deprive themselves of sleep, in order to procure it for their readers." I plead a conscientious " not guilty " to this allegation. " Blessed be the man who in vented sleep," says the immortal Squire ; and blessed be he, I repeat, who imparts it by any means, whether Doctor, Preacher, Author, or Bore. London, Oct. 15, 1854. CONTENTS.

Chapter I. Overland Route

— POINT DE GALLE — EARLT NAVIGATORS — CINGALESE COSTUME — " TERTICM 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, E 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, Elora, or Pomona, or whoever was entrusted with that duty, had, in a frolicsome spirit of exuberant generosity, emptied the cornu copia of vegetation intended for a whole conti nent, on the summit of the latter. It is literally smothered in verdant luxuriance, which heaped, massed, jumbled together in indescribable pro fusion, 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 poeti cally 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 intri cate. Plans ad nauseam for improving it have been proposed, discussed, and deferred, but no thing has as yet been done. The subject, for merly one of almost local interest, is now of con siderable 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 dis coveries 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, Albu querque, and others, explored the coasts of Java, Malacca, Ceylon, India, and Siam, making settleb2 ments and founding factories in all these coun tries; and it was not until they attempted to penetrate into the Celestial empire, that they came to a land where they were not only unwel come, 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 Camoens and Vasco de Gama, one of that gallant band I have men tioned, who, in the beginning of the sixteenth century, succeeded, by their energy and self devotion, in creating a golden age, though a transient one, for Portugal, stumbled upon Point de Galle, in his voyage from Calicut to the Lac cadi ves, or Hundred Thousand Isles, and by that accident brought to the world's notice a most fertile island, and cast amongst scholars and anti quarians 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 Taprobane, 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 under take 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 employes some fifteen degrees hotter than they would otherwise be,) I fancy the Bay presents very much the same appearance now as it did in those distant ages to which I have alluded. 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 most primitive buff, still stud and labour across the bay, fishing or boarding vessels, much as they might have done some 3,000 years ago. In the place, however, of boarding Tyrian galleys with " benches of Cypress inlaid with ivory, with fine linen of Egypt adorned with embroidery for sails," and making hard bargains with keen old Tyrians, they find themselves on board the more useful but scarcely picturesque vessels of the Peninsular and Oriental Company, and dispose of their glass emeralds and Birmingham snuff boxes to verdant griffs, who purchase with great enthusiasm at something over 500 per cent, of their real value.

On landing, which you do possibly with con siderable uneasiness in one of the afore-mentioned canoes, you are beset by a nondescript and anoma lous crowd, attired in scanty petticoats, reaching to the ankles, parasols in their hands, and their long hair drawn off the forehead, and turned up behind with a high tortoiseshell comb. These peculiarities of dress, together with their full busts and effeminate features, and the waddling gait caused by the restraint of the petticoats, impress the traveller with the idea that he has landed amongst a nation of women; but when assured of their masculine gender, the similarity amongst them all is so great that he immediately jumps to the conclusion that, on the other hand, there are no women at all ; and it is not till he has had some days' experience that he begins with any success to discriminate between the male and female portion of the community.

The only visi ble distinction between the sexes consists in the women wearing rather shorter jackets than the men, enjoying generally rather coarser features, and dispensing with the masculine appendages of combs and parasols. The Cingalese are, without exception, the most unnaturally effeminate race in appearance that I have ever seen ; and even after several months' residence in the island, one is continually con founded and disgusted by the appearance of creatures from the age of ten to fifteen, whom, but for the certain knowledge that they were men, one would certainly conclude to be women. From the time of the Lady Grenadier in Charles XII.'s army, who, adorned with a beard a yard and a half long, was taken prisoner at the battle of Pultowa, down to the Spanish Whiskeranda of last year, instances of bearded women of a masculine presence have been numerous.

And indeed in the chivalric days of old, in time of war, the ladies, both amongst the Athenians and the Lombards, not unfrequently tried to change their feminine into a martial appearance, by arranging the hair of the head under the chin to represent a beard, — but this was only on occasions, and for a purpose; but for a whole nation of men to assimilate to what one has always considered the peculiar fashions of women, is disgusting in the extreme. This total absence of the strong line of demarcation, that in all other countries marks the individuality of the sexes, is so unnatural, that one receives an impression of unconquerable con tempt and dislike for the entire race so mingled, and this feeling is never shaken off. So dearly do the Cingalese prize the fashion of wearing high combs, that the tyranny of the Tamul kings could devise no more galling and offensive enaction against the liberty and predilections of their low country subjects, than by forbidding the use of that article.

It is remarkable that Julius Cæsar attacked the forefathers of our Gallic neighbours on the same tender point, and obliged them to doff their chevelure as a token of submission. I have always considered that the trade of the hair merchants in France, who attend fairs for the purpose of persuading the peasant girls to dispose of their locks for a few paltry livres, is so unnatural and so cruel that, like the slave trade, it ought to be repressed vi et armis ; but if these said merchants could visit Ceylon, and, either by persuasion or force, deprive these long-haired nondescripts of their topknots, it would, on the other hand, be a benefit to society in general, and to those opposed to hyacinthine curls for the genus homo in particular. When watching those mincing conceited creatures sitting in groups, combing and anointing their long back hair, I have felt infinitely more disgust at their occu pation, than I ever experienced in viewing the amicable phrenological investigations mutually exchanged by Italian beggars at Naples and else where ; and I have often longed, like " Katha rina," to perform " with a three-legged stool " the same operation on their noddles, that they were performing with the genuine shell.

Most strangers have heard of the number and the varieties of precious stones in the Island of Ceylon, but the reality, as presented to them at Galle, must far exceed their most sanguine ex pectations. Plates of emeralds, rubies, sapphires, topaz, cats' eyes, &c. &c, are offered for sale in a profusion and of a size that remind one of those plucked by Aladdin in the enchanted garden. The seediest of Mussulman and Cingalese hawkers produce from the filthiest of turbans and petticoats the most resplendent of jewels. The unwary traveller, although attracted and admiring, probably begins by being very wary and cautious, and pooh poohs every stone, good, bad, or indifb ferent, as glass; but he gradually yields to the positive assurances of the dealers, and to the dazzling nature of their wares, and generally con cludes by giving five or six guineas for stones which he fondly believes are worth twenty or thirty times that sum.

This agreeable illusion lasts till, displaying his purchase with triumph to some more experienced hand, he is coolly told they are glass, and consoled by the assurance that they are very good imitations, and might have deceived a far better judge. Precious stones are actually found in consi derable numbers and of great beauty in Ceylon (indeed, that island and Burmah supply the greatest number of jewels for the markets), but all of any purity and value are immediately pur chased by the agents for the London and Paris markets, and only the very inferior ones find their way into the hands of the hawkers. Those pur chased by the griffs and greenhorns, are almost invariably good Birmingham glass, the manufac ture of which is now so perfect, and the imitation so superior in appearance to the genuine article, that an artful vendor has no difficulty in disposing of the glass, even in preference to the jewel. A fellow-passenger of mine gave 2_l. for four emerald rings, that afterwards proved to be every one of them glass, and worth some 24 pence.

Chapter II. Method Of Driving Galle To Colombo Cocoa-nut

GROVES— CASSIA AND CINNAMON— COLOMBO CLIMATE. The hotels at Galle are of course bad, as at what place peopled by English are they not ? So, after admiring for a couple of days the wild, almost rank luxuriance of the environs, we proceeded to Colombo. Travelling, doubtless, disabuses one of certain vulgar, narrow-minded prejudices concerning the invariable use for which certain objects are intended. We have an idea in England, for instance, that the driver of a vehicle is placed on the box for the purpose of guiding that vehicle, aud that the reins are placed in his hand to enable him to direct the exertions of the horse ; but such is by no means the case in Ceylon. He is there merely as a betel-chewing, expectorating peg on which the reins are suspended, but over which he exercises no control : he sits immovable, except as regards the whip-hand, which he uses most liberally going up hill, or through very deep ground: he never, for a moment, entertains any notion of guiding the horses, that office being undertaken by a miserable horsekeeper, who changes at each stage, and sits during the transit either on the foot-board behind, or on the step of the carriage; and whether the vehicle comes to grief by goiDg up a bank on one side, or down a bank on the other, or into a train of waggons in front, appears to all whom it most nearly con cerns a matter of utter indifference.

The distance to Colombo is some seventy miles, and the road throughout its entire length runs close to the sea, from which it is separated only by a thin belt of cocoa-trees. For the greater part of the distance both sides of the road are lined with native huts, little bamboo and tali pot-leaf buildings, resembling those that usually adorn the illustrated editions of Paul and Virginia. So continuous is this line of buildings that the traveller almost fancies he is passing through some straggling suburb ; and any person judging of the population of the island from the road between Galle and Colombo, would come to the conclusion that the island was one of the most densely peopled, instead of being, as in reality it is, one of the most thinly-inhabited spots in the East. If the stranger is struck with the number of natives who throng the road-side, he is no less struck with their invariable listlessness and want of energy.

The men seem to have no more urgent employment than lying at full length on mats or benches at the entrance of their huts, and gazing at the passers-by, or of squatting on their heels in rows, like frogs at the edge of a pool, masticating their chaw, and expectorating with a freedom and precision worthy of better men. The only energy indigenous to the country is shared in pretty equal proportions by the children and the pariah dogs, who rush out, and shout and bark after the coach, much in the same way that the like "critters" do in more temperate climes. It appears to be an instinct, as universal as it is annoying, for the children of all countries, nations, and languages, to shout and use frantic endeavours to overtake passing vehicles, and for dogs to do so likewise. The road was almost thronged with strings of curious little waggons, with arched talipot roofs projecting before and behind : these, drawn by the most diminutive of cattle, some actually not much higher than a large mastiff dog, and crawl ing unwillingly along at a steady rate of half-a mile an hour, bore a strong resemblance at a short distance to huge snails dragging their slow length.

The unbroken groves of cocoa-nut, for the distance of seventy miles, are more valuable to the proprietor than interesting or picturesque to the traveller. The land is of the average value of about 501. per acre, and belongs exclusively to natives, who prepare those nuts they do not con sume, for the Colombo oil-presses. The invariable tendency of the cocoa-nut to bend sea-wards is very remarkable on this road ; notwithstanding the strength and continued prevalence of the sea breeze, at least nine-tenths of the trees have a most decided inclination towards the ocean. They, together with the oyster-bearing mangroves of the West Indies, seem to thrive as well in salt water as in fresh: they court the spray, and in many instances you see healthy trees laden with fruit whose roots are washed and saturated by the waves.

In fact these two species of trees may decidedly be classed under the head of Amphibia, if such an order exists in inanimate creation. Your first five minutes in the Island of Ceylon impress you with the almost innumerable uses to which the cocoa palm is applied. The roofs of the huts, the screens from the sun, the mats, the drinking-cups, the ropes, in fact nearly every article of daily use, is the produce of this useful tree. It conduces scarcely less to the support than to the comfort of human life. The juice of the tree, when fresh drawn, affords a sparkling refreshing drink, very much resembling the pulque or toddy drawn from the American Aloe, in South America; when fermented the toddy becomes arrack, by no means a nauseous, though an excessively intoxicating beverage. The nuts, when green, are filled with delicious milk, and when mature, supply a delicate food, though indigestible to any save school-boys or niggers.

The cocoa-nut is to the native of Ceylon, what the date palm is to the Arab of the desert, and the eight hundred uses of the latter, and the hundred and eight of the former, have throughout ages been celebrated by the poets of both countries. When a grove of cocoa trees is in the course of being tapped for toddy, the drawers fasten three coir ropes from tree to tree, one to walk on, and one for either hand, and along these they pass with considerable rapidity. When seen at a short distance the ropes are invisible, and the curious effect is produced of a man crossing from tree to tree at a height of fifty or sixty feet from the ground, without any visible means of support. As you approach Colombo, the road-side houses increase in number, and alternate rather prettily with the government cinnamon gardens that bound the road on either side.

There is little doubt that cinnamon is the cassia of the Jews and ancients, and there seems a probability, from the remote ages to which the cultivation of this shrub can be traced in Ceylon, that it is the very place from which it was brought by Solomon's ships. The ancients did not know whence it came, and, like the topaz,* its habitat was for years a matter of wonder and speculation. In the days of Herodotus it was believed that some large birds in Arabia made their nests of branches of cassia, but whence they procured them was unknown. The means resorted to for securing these nests were rather original. The natives scattered large masses of flesh around, and the birds being of a greedy and selfish turn of mind, filled their nests with such quantities, that at length they gave way and fell to the ground — probably the original conception of the Roc in the history of Sindbad the Sailor.

The monopoly of cinnamon was guarded by the Dutch with some of the most iniquitous laws that even they, cruel and oppressive as they have always been in their commercial policy, ever enacted. To secure the monopoly to Ceylon, the entire growth of these trees in Java and the Coromandel coast was destroyed, the slightest peculation in the matter of exportation was fol lowed by immediate death, and the smallest sprig of cinnamon was valued more highly than the limb of a human being. The consumption— for what reason, I know not — has of late years con- * From Toird^etv, " to wonder." siderably decreased, and the production is by no means so lucrative as formerly. Cinnamon is known to possess particular properties as an anti dote to the destructive effects of mercury, and the miners and purifiers of the quicksilver mines in Mexico and South America consume by far the larger portion of the cinnamon crop in Ceylon.

It flourishes in a sandy soil, and is a pretty shrub of some four or five feet high ; the hue of the leaf and the form of the shrub reminding one consider ably of a dwarf ldac. The work in a cinnamon garden between crop time is very light, consisting solely of weeding. The cutting and peeling is a very neat operation, and was formerly entirely confined to a low caste, amongst the Cingalese, whose sole occupation, one may almost say, information, lay in that science. There are three barks, of which the second or middle one only supplies the cinnamon of commerce. The monopoly of peeling is now however being gradually destroyed by the Malabar men from the coast, who are sup planting the inhabitants of Ceylon, much in the same way as the Norway rat has driven out the black rat in England, or as the Scotch settlers and Anglo-Americans have respectively supplanted the Celts of the North of Ireland, and the Abori gines of North America.

Colombo is about as hot and unpicturesque a place as it has ever been my luck to visit ; to the stranger there is neither object of interest or amusement, and but for the extreme kindness and easy hospitality of its merchants, it would puzzle the most contented mind to pass a week there without excessive ennui. There are, so to speak, three towns, one small and compact, situated within the Dutch fort, composed chiefly of government and merchants' offices, barracks, and shops, and two long straggling suburbs without the walls, stretching and stinking in opposite directions. A large fresh-water lagoon of a most green, slimy, tropical appearance, producing in abundance a lotus of almost Victoria Regia magnificence, stretches away to the back of the fort, and around it are situated the bungalows of many of the Colombo merchants.

The propinquity of this lake would in any other tropical country (in the West Indies certainly) be considered as ensuring a considerable amount of fever to the neighbourhood'; in fact, I doubt whether any advantage would be sufficient to induce a West Indian to locate in such a position. However, Ceylon, in the matter of climate, stands per se, and offers a total antithesis as regards the healthiness of certain districts to most other tropical countries. Whilst the vicinity of tanks and lagoons of the most fœtid and agueish character is perfectly healthy, that of rivers is equally deadly. This apparent contradiction of the usual laws of nature is accounted for by two reasons. The tanks are covered with various aquatic plants, which, by a kind Providence, are made to serve not only as filterers and purifiers of the water itself, but even as consumers of a considerable portion of the noxious exhalations, that would otherwise poison the neighbourhood.

The banks of rivers, on the contrary, are rife with fever: the cause assigned for it is, that during the rainy seasons they swell to a great size, and collect the vegetable matter of a large extent of country, but owing to the rapidity with which they fall at the commencement of the dry season, and the winding and intricate nature of their course, the streams are unable to clear themselves, and this accumulation is left to decay in its bed, and infect the surrounding country. There exists also another reason — the beds of the Ceylon rivers are almost invariably composed of sand, and the stream, instead of sweeping down the decomposed vegetable matter it holds in its waters, as must be the case in hard-bedded rivers, percolates through the sand, leaving the poisonous matter on the sur face exposed to the burning rays of the tropical sun.

Chapter III. Dobies

"—CHOLERA— MALABAR SERVANT— MOORMEN— " TATTOOS " — PUNCHY". The anchorage for vessels of more than one hundred tons burden is very bad at Colombo, and except during the season of the coffee shipping, there are seldom more than one or two vessels lying there: being moreover quite out of the route of all the steamers, it does not share with Galle the excitement of witnessing the arrival and departure of old and new friends.* The weather inside the fort, where every item of sea-breeze is excluded, is very oppressive, and, as a matter of course, the barracks of the Euro pean troops are situated in the very hottest part of it ; and there, between two broad stagnant ditches, that hardly-used animal, the British sol dier, may be seen daily keeping guard under a sweltering sun, in the very same tight coat, stiff stock, and heavy accoutrement, that he would * There is, however, a considerable import trade carried on in the articles of coolies and rice from the mainland, but beyond the occasional stranding of one or two of these vessels with two or three hundred coolies, or two or three hundred tons of rice, on the " Drunken Sailor " or on the " Bar," the shipping interest is nil. wear if standing sentry over silver foxes and Polar bears in the Arctic regions.

The hotels are of course execrable and expen sive : the bed-room story was a large upper barn, that would have been flush, but for a number of very slight bulkheads which, not reaching above six feet from the floor, admitted a perfectly free circulation of air and conversation from one end to the other. The consequence of this arrange ment was an intimate knowledge of all your neighbours' movements and occupations. This might occasionally be inconvenient, and I was excessively amused one morning by being, I can scarcely say the unicilling auditor of a most con fidential, and to one party doubtless a most inte resting conversation, between a lady, young, to judge by her voice, and very young, to judge by her sentiments, and her trusty soubrette. To my vexation, at the very instant the name of the dear creature whose whiskers and dancing I had heard so warmly and lovingly commented upon, was trembling on the timid lips of the fair inamorata, somebody at the other end of the house let a boot or a clothes' brush fall, and the word was lost.

It was at Colombo that I first became acquainted with the Anglo-Cingalese idiom. I had heard the "talkie talkie " ofthe niggers in Dema rara, and the scarcely euphonious language of the Egyptian boatmen and donkey boys, but such a wanton, deliberate perversion of grammar as the language spoken by the Cingalese was quite new to me, and striking from its boldness and origi nality. In all Eastern hotels the Dobies, or washer men, and the barbers wander about like tame cats, picking up indifferently a stray shirt or a stray beard. At Colombo their attentions were espe cially annoying, and almost made one in disgust foreswear clean chins and clean shirts for ever. In consequence of the excessive heat and the un ceasing attacks of the mosquitoes, the night had generally reached the small hours before the feverish individual, exhausted and irritated with tossing from side to side, and provoked to a degree with unsuccessful attempts to discover the hole in the curtains that admitted all the mos quitoes, had attained any degree of calmness and resignation ; at that delicious moment, when, more than half asleep, he had just counted the last " sheep round the corner," or the last rook flying over his head, he was sure to be aroused to full con sciousness by a gentle tap most pertinaciously con tinued, accompanied by a " Sar " softly whispered through some chink in the door or partition.