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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XI. 



cardemom, tobacco. They also have silk, cotton, and other 

 material for clothes. Besides this, the villages furnish honey, 

 milk, butter, and rice ; and the sea and rivers good fish. 



But what makes Ceilon specially famed throughout the 

 world, and pleasant to everybody there, is that in the forests 

 whole groves of cinnamon are found. We saw them, and 

 noticed that they closely resembled the orange tree, but 

 stem and branches are finer, with less knots, and straight. 

 The leaves resemble those of the laurel. The blossoms 

 are white, and of a sweet smell. They develop a fruit 

 similar to the olive in size, from which the natives pre- 

 pare an oil that is considered to have sanative properties. 

 Baboons, apes, and birds eat these fruits as food, or when 

 they fall to the ground young trees sprout self-sown, and 

 as soon as these have obtained a certain height, the old trees 

 are cut down to make room for them. The tree has a 

 double bark. The outer, very thin, is first stripped off ; then 

 the inner one, which is the real cinnamon, is peeled in 

 long strips, which, when dried in the sun, curl themselves 

 up, and turn a reddish colour. We peeled the cinnamon of 

 a tree from curiosity, and found it to be mucilaginous, oily, 

 and green, and with little or no smell or taste. The peeled 

 tree requires sometimes two or three years to renew its bark, 

 seeming forsooth (and no wonder) to mourn awhile. But at 

 last it regains its former qualities. Between Puncto gale and 

 Negumbo grows the best and finest cinnamon ; there the 

 trees grow in many places wild by the thousand, and in 

 whole groves. Cinnamon is divided into three sorts, viz., 

 the finest, the medium quality, and the coarse, which latter 

 is obtained from old and big trees ; then there is an uncul- 

 tivated kind, which is also found in Malabar. 



The natives often build their huts with the wood of the 

 tree, but they also cut it as firewood, which in burning gives 

 out a delicate odour. Whilst thus the cinnamon is found to 

 possess strength, even in the third quality, the sappy root 

 yields not alone a fragrant juice, but also a kind of camphor. 

 The natives know also how to inlay the green bark, viz., 



