308 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
about 270 miles, by a breadth of about 140; so that 
a fortnight’s tour, even with the advantages of a 
Government motor-car and the excellent roads of 
the island, could convey but a slight impression 
of the forests and their working. I have often 
envied the ability of those who after a few weeks’ 
trip, covering a much vaster area, are able to decide 
with the assurance, of first-hand knowledge all of 
the social as well as many of the political problems 
that face Government servants in the East, and 
have wondered why such phenomenal perspicacity 
is not taken more advantage of in selections for the 
higher appointments that control the home and 
foreign policies of the Empire. For the ordinary 
individual, painstaking and enthusiastic as he may 
be, too often leaves some Imperial dependency, 
where he has passed half a lifetime, with a feeling 
of how little he knows even of the special work to 
which he has devoted himself, and how little he has 
learnt of the people amongst whom he has lived, 
though he may be aware that mutual trust, and 
even affection, has made that work interesting and 
successful. 
Of the 25,500 square miles of Ceylon, some 
4,000 square miles comprise the mountains, which 
consist of a series of ridges running in a general 
direction from south-east to north-west, while rising 
to a maximum altitude of 8,300 feet above sea-level. 
Thus these mountain ridges lie across the track of 
the two monsoon currents, and have a marked effect 
on the occurrence of the wet and dry seasons on the 
east’ and west sides of the island. The rainfall, so 
important a consideration in the constitution and 
