16 SPORT AND TRAVEL 



and palm trees. You swing on through the dwelling 

 quarter, where cool white and green villas, built 

 all of open piazzas and trellis-work rooms, lie back 

 from the road, past little plaster huts with black 

 Cingalese natives squatting cross-legged on their 

 thresholds, along the great Galle Face Esplanade, 

 where the waves of the Indian Ocean beat cease- 

 lessly on the palm-lined shore, and so out 

 through the outskirts of the town into the open 

 country. Here it is that the tropical foliage first 

 strikes upon the westerner's eye with its full rich- 

 ness and wealth of color. The road is bordered on 

 either side by a tangled mass of verdure, palms, 

 ferns and cacti, banana, cocoanut, and mango trees, 

 overrun with festoons of lace-like creepers, breaking 

 here and there into brilliant-hued blossoms and 

 forming a perfect network of jungle growth. Vividly 

 colored birds romp among the foliage and seem to 

 revel in the fragrance and sunshine. Creaking bul- 

 lock-carts and fierce-looking black water-buffaloes 

 lumber past you; a continuous stream of natives 

 hurry this way and that on their various errands, 

 women with jewels in their noses and silver rings 

 on fingers, toes, and ankles, young girls balancing 

 on their heads queer-shaped earthen rice-pots, old 

 men with long, snowy beards showing against their 

 black skins, boys with flowers and spices to sell, and 



