220 AUSTRALIA AND HOMEWARD. 



villages and towns have sprung up where fifty years 

 ago all was jungle and desolation, and means of 

 employment have been afforded the poor people. As 

 in India, so it was in Ceylon in past ages ; there was 

 plenty of food in the .country to feed the people, but 

 in some districts they were dying by the thousand 

 with famine, because there were no roads over which 

 food could be conveyed in time. Now all this in 

 Ceylon is changed. 



An earnest writer has lately said that roads are 

 great educators, and that especially in India and 

 Ceylon, roads and railways are doing as much to level 

 caste and destroy superstition as all the force of the 

 missionaries and schoolmasters. Of this we may 

 have our doubts, yet we rejoice in the hope that all 

 these influences combine to bring about the dispersion 

 of the darkness and the ushering in of the glorious 

 day of truth. For this many prayers continually 

 ascend. 



ARABIAN SEA, January 19th, 1888. 



