152 



The National Geographic Magazine 



For this last half century, British gov- 

 ernors have tried to redeem this rich 

 country and repopulate it. A post-road, 

 with rest-houses, was built through to 

 Jaffna and to Trincomalee, the old tanks 

 were cleared out and walled round again, 

 and a railway projected from Colombo 

 around through the lowlands to Anurad- 

 hapura and Jaffna. The archssological 

 survey found work to do far beyond the 

 limits of the appropriations, but the won- 

 ders of ancient art the)' have uncovered 

 at Anuradhapura,* Mihintale, and Sigiri 

 furnish attractions to the winter tourists, 

 who are a very certain source of revenue 

 to Ceylon. 



ON THE ROAD TO SIGIRI 



Breakfasting by candle light at Matale 

 rest-house, one may start at six o'clock 

 and drive through the very tolerable sub- 

 stitute for Eden that the tropical world 

 can present in that clearest, freshest hour 

 of day. Minae birds sang from tall trees 

 and cocoa trees, and that grotesque 

 home friend, the woodpecker, drummed 

 on all sorts of strange tree trunks. The 

 woodpecker and the cocoa palm tree are 

 not associated ideas with us of temperate 

 America, to whose minds the rolling 

 notes and scolding chatter of a wood- 

 pecker conjures up an_v other picture. 



The road dropped away between 

 great plantations, where the long-leafed, 

 hybrid, Assam tea bushes striped the red 

 earth in endless lines and feathery 

 grevillea trees shaded the bushes in as 

 precise rows. One tea plantation bor- 

 dered for three miles along the road, 

 where great arks of bullock carts — 

 prairie schooners with thatched roofs — 

 creaked their way, hung over the outside 

 with bunches of fodder and cooking pots, 

 and bursting open with their freight of 

 women and children and household ef- 

 fects. Gay young planters pranced by 

 on Arab horses or sped along in dog 

 carts. Strings of spindle-legged Tamils 

 came on from Jaffna seeking plantation 



*See November, igo6. National Geographic 

 Magazine for description of ruins at Annrad- 

 bapura. 



work and carrying all their possessions 

 tied in a bundle on their heads, including 

 even the sun umbrella. Hedges of aloes, 

 hibiscus, and lantana, rows of tall tama- 

 rind trees festooned with pepper vines, 

 and always the graceful plumes of cocoa 

 palms against blue sky, made the com- 

 mon highway like the ideal scenes of a 

 theater drop-curtain. Groups of Tamil 

 women in white and brilliant red head 

 draperies seemed posed beside the bril- 

 liant green tea bushes, and to be tossing 

 tea leaves over their shoulders into cylin- 

 drical baskets on their backs, only while 

 they waited for the photographer or the 

 sketch class to arrive. When the kodak 

 did arrive before one black beauty, with 

 jeweled rings in her nose and a inite of a 

 black baby astride of her hip, she pulled 

 her veil over her face and set up a howl. 

 Promises of a mone_v reward did not 

 seem to reach her ear, but they reached 

 the ears of a few dozen others, who came 

 running, and with whoops and shrieks 

 precipitated themselves upon the tea bush 

 my kodak pointed to. Then the black 

 overseer came, with black looks on the 

 blackest face ever seen, and with his big 

 walking stick cleared the magpie mob 

 away and made the young mother stand 

 up and look pleasant in the act of picking 

 tea. For this she, or rather the baby, 

 received the promised tiny silver piece, 

 which the pickaninny c[uickly swallowed, 

 and there was uproar again as we drove 

 away. 



A few rows of shops now and then 

 constituted the village bazars, where the 

 estate coolies are tempted to dissipate, to 

 spend for bananas and cocoanuts, red 

 peppers and curry stuff, or for brilliant 

 calicoes and gay teapots. Three shining 

 figures of black bronze sat under a 

 thatched roof molding red clay on the 

 potters' wheel, and a yellow bronze Arab 

 baby ran out, clothed only in coral beads 

 and bits of hammered silver. A bearded 

 Cingalese patriarch, nearly air-clad, 

 rested under a ban}'an tree, and a bronze 

 Cupid leaned lovingly against him. Then 

 estates and busy village bazars ceased, 

 rice fields began, and the cool white gov- 



