186 Miscellaneous Notices from the Island of Ceylon. 
10. Miscellaneous Noteces from the Island of Ceylon. 
Extract from a letter addressed toa gentleman in Middle- 
bury, Vt. by the Rev. Mrron Winstow, American 
Missionary on the Island of Ceylon :— 
“In Jaffna, there are no minerals. One entire plain, 
raised a few feet above the bed of the sea ;—the soil, in 
any places, made up of decomposed sea-shells and coarse 
coraline, and all evidently of a secondary formation, cov- 
ering an extensive substratum of the coral rock, forms the 
District of Jaffna. The industry of the inbabttsnts has 
converted this originally barren spot into an almost con- 
tinued garden, giving sustenance, from an extent of about 
thirty miles by tem, on an average, to about two hundred 
thousand inhabitants. The principal articles raised are, 
rice, horse-geam, two or three inferior kinds of dry grain, 
unknown in America, yams, sweet potatoes, small onions, 
sinall beans, (or an inferior kind of pulse, between the 
bean and pea,) and several culinary Plantes used by the 
natives in food, unknown in northern latitudes. 
“The fruits are mangoes, plantains, bananas, bread fruit, 
jack fruit, oranges, limes, citrons, figs, grapes, (the two lat- — 
ter seldom cultivated, but tolerably good when they ares) — 
dates, promegranates, and, indeed, in greater or less abun- 
dance, most tropical productions. Water-melons and cu-_ 
cumbers grow well here, and most garden vegetables may 
be cultivated, but only by having European seeds; an 
then they do not become very good. In the interior, the 
climaie is much better for gardening. Hare: there is al- 
most a constant drought from January to October, and the 
inhabitants are obliged to water all their gardens and elds 
from tanks and wells. Cinnamon is found only in the in- 
terior, and south of the Island; where also cate, pepPet 
tity of rice to support the inhabitants. The cocoa-nut, 
and small fan palin. called here palmyra, give much suste- 
nance to the natives the latter, panonleliy, affording 
food to the poorer class, nearly half the year. 
