ABSTRACT
At two o’clock we drove to the station and took our seats in the train for Kandy, with a 75-mile journey before us. The Ceylon railways are a Government monopoly, and there are 185 miles open for traffic. The carriages are horribly uncomfortable, the first-class being no better than the third-class on an English trunk line. I had to pay heavy excess on our luggage. The journey lasted five hours, an average speed of 15 miles an hour. For some miles out of Colombo the train runs through a flat country chiefly under rice cultivation, or in grass for cattle. The whole area is one vast swamp, every crop being profusely irrigated, the cattle, all black buffaloes, feeding knee deep in water. Wherever there is a knoll, or a bit of rising ground, a beautiful tropical picture forms itself; a clump of quaint cottages and barns, surrounded by palms, jack-fruit trees, bananas, and vegetable gardens, the dark red tiles of the buildings, the bright yellow and crimson dresses of the peasants, and the brown skins of the naked children relieving the intense and somewhat monotonous tropical green. Presently the Kelani-Ganga River, the greatest stream of water in the island, is crossed by a very fine iron bridge, and on the other side a branch line turns off to the quarries from which were got the stones for building the breakwater at Colombo. Fifty miles from Colombo the railway begins the great climb of 6,000 feet to Nuwera Eliya. It creeps up the flank of a magnificent mountain, Allagalla, whose high peak, crowning a sheer precipice, dominates the whole valley. From the summit of Allagalla, the old Kandyan kings used to hurl those whom they suspected of treason. On the opposite side of the great green valley of Dekanda are the Camel Mountain, so called from its resemblance to that animal, and the Bible Mountain, with a chain of connecting peaks 4,000 to 5,000 feet above the sea. In the valley are seen terraced fields of pale green rice, the flower-like branches of the Kekuna trees, magnificent forest trees covered with purple and pink blossoms, palms of all kinds, with here and there noble specimens of the great talipot palm, and patches of luxuriant tropical jungle, bright with a score of different brilliant flowers or creepers which throw themselves from one tree-top to the other, as they tower above the tangled undergrowth. Beautiful waterfalls are seen up the glens, as the train climbs slowly by, while others rush under us as we cross them on bridges, to leap into mid-air, and lose themselves in clouds of mist and spray, in which the sun dances in all the colours of the rainbow. Every now and then we get a glimpse beneath us of the fine road constructed long since by the English Government, to enable them to take and keep possession of the ancient capital, which had been wrested from the Portuguese and Dutch by the valiant old Kandyan kings; this road is now superseded by the railway. A few miles from Kandy the train, after passing through several tunnels, runs over what is called “Sensation Rock,” skirting the edge of the cliff so closely that the sight drops a thousand feet before it rests on anything on which a blade of grass or a tropical creeper can lay hold. Just beyond this exciting scene we cross the dividing ridge of two water-sheds, and in a very short time reach the lovely valley of Kandy, run into the station, and by seven o’clock find ourselves comfortably settled at the Queen’s Hotel.
