124 THE OUT-STATION ; OR, 



my out-station experience was gained, I used in a 

 manner to make it a country-seat, by spending therein 

 all my unoccupied time. 



The view from the summit was not to be equalled 

 even in Ceylon for extent or magnificence. 



The two or three forts in sight in the distance ap- 

 peared like so many pill-boxes, although the area of 

 each was in reality large enough to have contained 

 two or three thousand soldiers ; and the idea, as one 

 looked down upon them and reflected that they were 

 inhabited by human beings, imparted a very con- 

 temptible notion of the pigmy race of man. 



It required no great stretch of fancy in the be- 

 holder parva solens componere magnis to make 

 the scene before him appear a perfect world in minia- 

 ture, or to imagine himself a second Gulliver among 

 the Lilliputians, when he considered that the invisible 

 " dots" within the said pill-boxes were placed there 

 (dressed in red cloth) to keep in order other little dots 

 (whose original fatherland it was) if they became ob- 

 streperous, or expressed the slightest desire of possess- 

 ing and governing the territory allotted to them from 

 the beginning of creation, or, at least, since its distri- 

 bution, and then the mind would extend the simile 

 to the world, and laugh to think it under the domi- 

 nion of these less than mites even through a telescope 

 to think that similar " dots" were hanging other 

 "dots" -big "dots" bullying little " dots" " dots" 



