3 o 
RUBBER PLANTING IN CEYLON 
train was not due for half an hour, I went to the “Rest House,” a hotel 
owned by the government and run by a trusty native, where I had an 
excellent breakfast. I paid the fixed charges, signed mv name to the 
visitors’ book, saying that I was well pleased, and walking on to the 
station, caught the train back to Colombo. In the afternoon I hired a 
jinrikisha, and rode around the town. These “rickshaws” are simply 
huge perambulators drawn by a half naked coolie who trots along all 
day content with ten cents an hour (gold). Most of the rickshaws are 
old and rattley, but a few lately introduced have pneumatic tires, and 
it is only a question of time before they will all have them. 
As Director Willis had been good enough to invite me to make my 
home with him when I went up country to visit the Peradeniya gardens, 
and as I had only one suit of white flannels, I got the tailor at the Galle 
hace to make me another. I was measured in the morning and the suit 
was delivered that evening. It cost ten rupees [=about $3.64] for the 
making, and the man who delivered it got two rupees, because the tailor, 
his master, was such a hard man to work for, and the boy who was with 
the man who delivered it got one rupee because of some affliction that 
he had suffered, and the dog that accompanied the boy who was with 
the man — well, he didn’t get anything, but I vow he sat up and begged 
just as long as I was in sight. 
1 made an early start for Peradeniya, which means “guava plain.” 
going by the government railway in a very comfortable first-class car 
that is a sort of compromise between the American smoking car and 
the English compartment car, and about half the size. The government 
railways, by the way, are pretty generally good in Ceylon. The equip- 
ment is all that could be expected, although the cars are small ; the 
freight cars, for example, being twelve-ton affairs with corrugated iron 
roofs, and the locomotives look very light. The railway stations, how- 
ever, are extremely good, and in most of them a white man need not 
wait at the ticket window, but may march into the agent's sanctum, 
and get his ticket before the natives are served. The profits that the 
railroads earn is expended on* the carriage roads, a plan that some praise 
and some condemn. Anyhow, the latter roads are first-class, and an 
automobilist could go from one end of the island to the other if the 
elephants did not object. 
Soon we were bidden to the “refreshment carriage” where a good 
breakfast was served for about sixty cents, after which I sat on the shadv 
side in my car, and took note of the great paddy fields in which sullen 
water buffalo wallowed and fed, and where natives, clad onlv in breech- 
