FIRST LETTER. 
Crossing the Atlantic— English Manufacturers and Ceylon Rubber— On 
Board the Himalaya— Stromboli— Port Said and the Suez Canal— The Red 
Sea and Aden— Beautiful Ceylon— At the Galle Face Hotel— Singalese, 
Tamils and Chinese — Quaint Customs — Director Willis, of Peradeniya and 
Heneratgoda — The Oldest Plantations of Hevea — In a Bullock ''Hackery” 
to Heneratgoda Gardens. 
T O those who are interested as to why* I chose the Leyland liner, 
Devonian, to carry me across the Atlantic at the beginning of my 
journey toward the Far East, I beg to explain that she is a big, 
roomy, seaworthy craft of 11,000 tons, that there were only six passengers 
all told, and although she carried some eight hundred cattle, they did not 
appear on the deck, or at table, nor would one have dreamed of their 
existence, once they were driven aboard. The ten days that were occu- 
pied in crossing, spent chiefly on the promenade deck playing quoits with 
the ship's doctor, put me in fine trim for the brief view of Liverpool and 
London that I had before the alleged train dc luxe bore me to Marseilles, 
to join the P. and O. steamship, the Himalaya. My stop in England was 
only long enough to allow me to see a few of the leading rubber manu- 
facturers, and get their ideas as to the value of the new Para rubber that 
Ceylon planters are sending to that market. 
One who has probably used as much of this rubber, or more than 
any other, summarized his experience as follows: “It shrinks on the aver- 
age about 1.4 per cent. I use it successfully in all grades of fine work, 
including cut sheet, but do not like it for cements. It stands all tests 
after vulcanization — compression, stretch and return, oils, etc., just as 
well as fine Para, and is perfectly satisfactory.” 
Another detailed the results of his own experiments thus: “This is a 
general summing up of the practical results, obtained from approximately 
two tons of rubber, from about twenty different plantations. The irregu- 
larity in quality is very great, varying from tough elastic gum, apparently 
equal to Manaos Para, to soft, sticky short rubber, with little more elas- 
