CEYLON COCOA ESTATE 181 



splendid road. The government roads of 

 Ceylon, in width, in smoothness of surface, and 

 general well-kept appearance, compare favour- 

 ably with the best English high roads ; and 

 where the hills are not too long, they are the 

 very beau ideal of what a cyclist would most 

 desire. Albeit the method by which this 

 result is achieved strikes a newcomer as very 

 quaint and primitive. 



The efficient state of the road department is 

 due in great measure to the untiring energy 

 and skill of the late Major Skinner, who began 

 his roadmaking career in 1820, as a boy of 

 fifteen, but already an officer in the Ceylon 

 Rifles. He was given two hundred Kandyan 

 labourers, and told to make a section of the 

 road between Kandy and Colombo. Although 

 he had no experience of such work he carried 

 it out successfully. This was the first trunk 

 road made in the island, but when Major 

 Skinner retired, forty-seven years later, in 1867, 

 Ceylon could boast of nearly three thousand 

 miles of made roads ; one fifth of which were 

 first class metalled roads, and another fifth ex- 

 cellent gravelled highways. Most of these 

 were either surveyed by Major Skinner or 

 made in some way under his auspices ; and it 

 was he who built the beautiful satin wood 

 bridge over the Mahavillagange at Peradeniya, 

 in which neither a bolt nor a nail is used 



