Vol. XXIII, No. 2 
WASHINGTON 
February, 1912 
/TTl 
Or 
ATEOHAIL 
©(SIIAIPIHIK 
■A(SAM] 
ADAM'S SECOND EDEN 
By Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore 
Author of "J^va — -the; Garde;n of the East," "China — thf Long-Livfd 
Empire," "Winter India," "Jinrikisha Days in Japan," etc. 
CEYLON, the second Paradise, to 
which Adam fled after the expul- 
sion, is Hterally one of the "sum- 
mer isles of Eden lying in dark purple 
spheres of sea." Its softly blue moun- 
tains rise up out of the sea and belt 
themselves round with a broad band of 
level, green lowlands, where crooked 
cocoa palms, with trunks aslant at every 
angle, reel on swollen feet to the very 
beaches of yellow sand and bend their 
tufted heads to the voice of the sea, 
without which, it is said, they cannot 
live. 
One always comes into Colombo har- 
bor at daybreak, from whichever quarter 
the ship sails, and the dawn's freshness 
adds to the beauty of the setting and the 
clearness of every impression. Native 
catamarans, rude dugout canoes, each 
with an outrigger log which keeps it 
level or afloat in any sea or surf, pursue 
each mail steamer into the protected 
harbor, and brown boys with their in- 
numerable black and yellow brothers are 
ready to dive for coins until their cheeks 
bulge with the accumulated small change 
of all nations. 
Then Arab boys climb straight up the 
iron side of the ship with Europe's 
and Colombo's latest newspapers, and a 
steam-launch puts one beside the model 
landing-stage, where England's might in 
the person of a pink-faced British con- 
stable maintains law and order in the 
crowds of chattering natives of every 
hue, clad in cottons of every strong color 
that can dare the tropic sun. 
A hard red roadway stretches away in 
far perspective, lined with white build- 
ings, and the tableaux and motion pic- 
tures begin. Big thatched carts drawn 
by splendid white bullocks and little carts 
drawn by tiny white bullocks, that trot 
like ponies, transport the brown folk and 
their families off to their quarter of the 
town, and, if the deep verandas of the 
"G. O. H." (Grand Oriental Hotel) be- 
side the jetty do not engulf one on the 
spot, the most modern jinrikishas, with 
fat pneumatic tires, waft one across the 
neck of land to the other great hotel and 
center of interest at the edge of the sea. 
The pad-pad-pad of the runner's bare 
feet on the hard red roads are the only 
sounds, and there is no more motion felt 
than in a floating balloon. 
The jinrikisha speeds past the clock 
tower and the old fort and the new bar- 
racks over to the great greensward of 
Galle Face, where the blue, blue sea 
stretches away unbroken clear to the 
Antarctic Continent, and the long, lazy 
surf of the Indian Ocean rolls in soft, 
