ADAM'S SECOND EDEN 
147 
or by automobile it is only a morning's 
run over roads worthy of a London park. 
One admirable English officer gave his 
life, 50 years of it, to perfecting the road 
system of Ceylon. He constructed 3,000 
miles of highways, maintaining a stand- 
ing army of 3,000 or 4,000 road coolies 
specially trained to that work. It was 
wisely ordered from the first that every 
adult male should give six days' labor, 
or its equivalent tax, for road-making. 
That policy, pursued since 1848, has re- 
sulted in a perfection of such means of 
communication as fills an American with 
€nvy. 
One meets nothing all day but Tamils 
from the Jaffna end of the island or the 
Indian mainland, walking to the hills for 
employment on the great estates — poor, 
spindly, weedy looking creatures of inki- 
est blackness, to whom the Ceylon hill 
country is like an America of opportu- 
nity and high wages. The average pay 
of 10 and 16 United States cents a day 
on the tea plantations is three times as 
much as they can earn in India ; and, in 
addition, they are housed, given medical 
care, and schools provided for their chil- 
dren. 
Once we saw an elephant devouring 
the yellow flowers of a mango tree, but 
his keeper was lolling in the shade ; and 
again a jungle cock flashed across the 
road to the shelter of bushes hung with 
the gorgeous red and yellow Gloriosa su- 
perba, the most splendid tropical flower 
that grows, and quite deserving its ex- 
travagant name. Butterflies danced in 
clouds down the empty road — large tropi- 
cal butterflies with great wings of pris- 
matic sheen, and the common little yel- 
low cabbage butterflies that are one of 
the three things found in every country 
and climate the world over, the others 
being the Norway rat and the Chinese. 
the; glorious city of anuradhpura 
All this lowland half of Ceylon was 
once thickly populated, and the city of 
Anuradhpura, founded at the time of 
the Aryan invasion, 2,500 years ago, was 
one of the richest and greatest cities of 
the East. Its real history began with the 
arrival of the Buddhist missionaries from 
India in 245 B. C. and their planting of 
the sacred Bo tree, a branch from the tree 
Photo fioiii David Fairchild 
A KANDYAN KING: CEYLON 
under which Buddha sat when he attained 
Buddhahood. There has been continuous 
record kept of the ceremonies and festi- 
vals connected with the tree from that 
day to date — when walls were built, 
when branches were lost, of the festivals 
of lanterns at the watering time in each 
dry season — princely monks minutely 
