30 RUBBER PLANTING IN CEYLON 



train was not due for half an hour, I went to the "Rest House," a hotel 

 owned by the government and run by a trusty native, where I had an 

 excellent breakfast. I paid the fixed charges, signed my name to the 

 visitors 7 book, saying that I was well pleased, and walking on to the 

 station, caught the train back to Colombo. In the afternoon I hired a 

 jinrikisha, and rode around the town. These "rickshaws" are simply 

 huge perambulators drawn by a half naked coolie who trots along all 

 day content with ten cents an hour (gold). Most of the rickshaws are 

 old and rattley, but a few lately introduced have pneumatic tires, and 

 it is only a question of time before they will all have them. 



As Director Willis had been good enough to invite me to make my 

 home with him when I went up country to visit the Peradeniya gardens, 

 and as I had only one suit of white flannels, I got the tailor at the Galle 

 Face to make me another. I was measured in the morning and the suit 

 was delivered that evening. It cost ten rupees [=about $3.64] for the 

 making, and the man who delivered it got two rupees, because the tailor, 

 his master, was such a hard man to work for, and the boy who was with 

 the man who delivered it got one rupee because of some affliction that 

 he had suffered, and the dog that accompanied the boy who was with 

 the man well, he didn't get anything, but I vow he sat up and begged 

 just as long as I was in sight. 



I made an early start for Peradeniya, which means "guava plain," 

 going by the government railway in a very comfortable first-class car 

 that is a sort of compromise between the American smoking car and 

 the English compartment car, and about half the size. The government 

 railways, by the way, are pretty generally good in Ceylon. The equip- 

 ment is all that could be expected, although the cars are small ; the 

 freight cars, for example, being twelve-ton affairs with corrugated iron 

 roofs, and the locomotives look very light. The railway stations, how- 

 ever, are extremely good, and in most of them a white man need not 

 wait at the ticket window, but may march into the agent's sanctum, 

 and get his ticket before the natives are served. The profits that the 

 railroads earn is expended on the carriage roads, a plan that some praise 

 and some condemn. Anyhow, the latter roads are first-class, and an 

 automobilist could go from one end of the island to the other if the 

 elephants did not object. 



Soon we were bidden to the "refreshment carriage' 7 where a good 

 breakfast was served for about sixty cents, after which I sat on the shady 

 side in my car, and took note of the great paddy fields in which sullen 

 water buffalo wallowed and fed, and where natives, clad only in breech- 



