( 58 ) 
them <a long row of one-storied houses with 
low pitched roofs and deep verandahs or 
steps, the latter supported by tall and 
slender wooden pillars, while along the outer 
edge of the verandah of each house was a 
wooden railing separating it from the street, 
which was a few feet below it; so that the 
perspective showed two long rows of these 
pillars diminishing in the distance. What 
variety there was, arose from the different 
shapes of the end gables of each house, the 
different colours of the woodwork— the Dutch 
have always been fond of bright colours — 
and on^clos'er inspection, from the variety of 
ornamental fanlights and doorway lintels. 
Nowadays these wooden pillars have in 
many cases given way to pillars built of 
brick and plaster, not perhaps to the ad- 
vantage of the picturesque, and the line of 
the street is often broken by the substitu- 
tion for the overhanging eaves of an 
old house of a new two-storey house with a 
pretentious p'aster facade, emborlying the 
native conception of European architecture- 
whitewashed and spick-and span to start 
with, but in a year or two weather-stained 
into shabbiness. 
I have referred to the forts that were 
built by the Dutch at every station of 
importance held by them on the coast or 
inland <as far as their territories extended, 
A detailed description of these is not neces- 
sary, as there is nothing distinctively 
Dutch about them except in their gate- 
ways.* The gateways are usually surmounted 
by the coat-of-arms of the state or the 
monogram of the company and the date of 
the erection of the fort. There was gener- 
ally a belfry on one of the walls. The 
Colombo Port was demolished tliirty or 
forty years ago, when two or three fine 
gateways were destroyed. That at Jaffna, 
in the north of the island, owing to the 
drier climate and the materials of which 
the fort is built, viz , coral, is in excellent 
preservation, though it has suffered in the 
past from vandalism. 
At Galle the preservation of the fort, 
Avhich, like the Colombo Fort, included 
within it a great part of the Dutch settle- 
ment, gives the place the appearance of a 
walled town. Its demolition was threatened 
some years ago, but for the present it is 
safe. There are smaller forts at Batticaloa, 
Matara and Tangalla, and a few remains 
at Negombo, Kalutara, and at some places 
a few miles inland from the coastline. 
Next Ave come to the churches. One at 
Colombo and one at Galle had been demol- 
ished before the British occupation. There 
are, however, churches in good preserva- 
* The gateway of one of the two forts at Matara, 
In the Southern Province — " The Star Fort," as it 
ia now called from its shape, thongli its official 
name was the " lledouie \an Eck " — has over it 
the arms and initials of Governor Van Fck, carved 
in wood with a wooden tympanum, on which is 
carved the monogram of the company, surrounded 
by a floriated design (see Fig, 3j. TIrs woodwork 
is still in excellent preseivatioti, though it was 
l^one iQ 1763. 
tion at Colombo, Jaffna, Galle and Matara, 
which belong or belonged to the Dutch Re- 
formed Church. There are others inthe Jaffna 
Peninsula, some in ruins, some rebuilt out of 
all likeness to their oriuinal design. Some 
have disappeared altogether, as at Negombo 
and Batticaloa, as well as the two referred 
to as having been demolished at Colombo 
and Galle. While on this subject, I must take 
leave to dissent, at any rate as regards 
Ceylon, from an opinion expressed by no 
less an authority than Mr. James Fergusson 
in his " History of the Modern Styles of 
Architecture " (p. 468), that " the Dutch 
have done very little in their settlements. 
Their churches, which are few and far 
between, ar^ of the worst class of meeting- 
house architecture," On the contrary, wher- 
ever they had a station of any importance, 
the Dutch in Ceylon erected a church,* and 
the church was the best building in the 
station. It was always substantially built ; 
and one is rather surpi'ised to find that the 
Dutch, thou^jh Calvinists, have departed so 
far as they have done from the meeting- 
house type in their ecclesiastical buildings. 
The churches at Colombo (Wolvendahl) and 
at Jaffna are large cruciform buildings 
(Figs 6 and 7) with a central tower on 
lantern ; large doorways and windows with 
arched lintels ; pulpit, not in the centre of 
the walls as in the meeting-house, but at the 
intersection of the transept and what we 
should call the chancel or choir, with carved 
sounding-boards over them, and large pews 
or stalls for the civil and military ofSeials 
and for the elders and deacons. At Jafl'na 
the " Commandeur's " pew occupies the 
angle of the chancel and transepts opposite 
the pulpit, and stalls on each side of the 
chancel remind one of the mediseval arrange- 
ments (Figs. 9, 10). At Wolvendahl the 
pulpit occupies one corner of the intersection 
and a large pew or stall each of the other 
three corners. On the wall are memorial 
tablets of stone or wood, with armorial 
bearings blazoned in colours, supplemented 
by insignia such as batons, swords, and 
spurs. Though these buildings are of course 
designed in the quasi classical cr Uenaissance 
style of the period, they are instinct with 
the mediajval spirit, and their interiors 
with their massive walls and deeply recessed 
and heavily mullioned and many-paned 
wmdows, are solemn and church-like, with 
little of the meeting-house about them. 
* In the populous Jaffna Peninsula alone they 
had a church in each of the thirty-two parishes 
into which the district had been divided, and " the 
substantial walls of many of them were standing" 
when the American missionaries eutered into 
possession of them twenty years after the Dutch 
had left the Island. The Batticotta church, even 
though one-third of it at the "east end" has been 
partitioned off as a dwelling-house, can accom- 
modate 2,003 people (Report of the American 
Ceylon Mission, 1896). I think n)yself, however, 
that the division of the Peninsula into parishes, as 
well as many of the church buildings, including 
Batticotta, were a legacy from the Portuguese, 
though the Dutch kept up the former and preservedl 
91' rebuilt the latter, 
