Janairy 22, HSl. 1 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
G9 
and thus it was that about this time last year my wife and I left 
the gloom of the English autumn, and the smoke of Birmingham 
behind us, and made our way quietly across France and Italy to 
IS^aples, where we embarked on the P. and O. steamer “Chusan” 
for Colombo, our first halting place on our long journey to Burma 
or Farther India. 
I have accepted your invite to address you to-night the more 
readily because it gives me the opportunity of helping in some 
degree to dispel the astounding ignorance which prevails in this 
country about the latest addition to our vast possessions in the 
East, its people, and its probable future. When I first spoke of 
my intention to make this journey one friend said, “ Going to 
Burma? Why, surely it’s very dangerous ? ” And another, “ Are 
«iot you running great risks from Dacoits?” And yet another, 
■“Isn’t the country very unsettled? and the people, are not they 
very savage ? ” And so on. 
Well, you shall have my impressions of Burma and its savages 
from the landing place, for our big ship draws .30 feet of water ; 
but our luggage is quickly transferred to a boat by bronze-skinned 
Tamuls amid vast clamour and bustle, and in half an hour we set 
foot on the fairy land of Ceylon, one of the loveliest islands in the 
world. Here all is new and full of interest. Natives of India, 
whose slight lithe forms suggest animated bronze statues, and 
Cinghalese in white robes, and with their long jet-black hair coiled 
on the top of their heads and fastened with large tortoiseshell combs 
form the bulk of the ever-shifting human panorama ; in the 
corridor of your hotel are scores of dealers in jewels—some genuine, 
more false—who would make your life a burden if you had not 
already learned the talismanic words “ bus, jour ” (“enough, get 
away). Indian jugglers and snake charmers exhibit their hanky- 
panky in the verandah, perform the celebrated basket trick, and 
make a Mango plant 3 feet high grow out of a seed and a little heap 
of dust, and produce their cobras and pythons to the terror of 
unaccustomed travellers. If you want to make a purchase or pay 
in a few minutes ; but I must detain you a moment on the way. I 
.am not going to waste your time by a description of a sea voyage 
on board a luxurious ocean-going steamer of 5030 tons. The 
miseries of a storm at sea, when all ports are do ed and the 
■thermometer stknds at 00° in your cabin, are not an inviting theme. 
The delights of a smooth voyage, when you glide all day over 
glassy seas and beneath cloudless skies, of nights in which the stars 
or the moon shine out of a sky of ebony, as they do here only once 
in a year, but with this difference, that there you can lie back in 
your comfortable deck chair and revel in the coolness of the still 
air, while here you must shiver in an ulster. These and many 
other things are commonplace», with which everyone has become 
familiar in these days of travel. 
Imagine therefore that we have escaped from the heat of the Red 
•Sea, passed the grim rocks of Perim, and landed our mails at Aden, 
where, it is commonly sard, only a sheet of paper divides you from 
the nether region, and that is scorched, and made a safe run across 
the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean to Ceylon. As we approach the 
harbour of Colombo we see the long coast line fringed with tall 
Cocoa-nut Palms, our first glimpse of a vegetation so strange and so 
different from any we have seen before. We lie out half a mile 
a call you hail a jinriksha, a miniature cab, drawn not by a nag but 
by a Tamul laJ, who whisks you off at seven or eight miles an hour 
under a blazing sun, whose direct rays you could not encounter for 
one minute without getting a sunstroke ; his head unprotected save 
by Nature’s covering, and the working of every muscle visible 
under his shining, bronzy, and well-oiled skin. All is full of life 
and colour ; all entirely different from anything we ever see under 
our dull and sunless skies. 
But towards five o’clock the fierce heat abates, and the thermo¬ 
meter goes down perhaps to 80°, for it is winter time now, and at 
this hour every new comer takes a carriage and drives to the far- 
famed Cinnamon Gardens, a park-like public ground, where he 
saunters in the grateful shade of Cocoa and Fan Palms, Bvnanas, 
and tropical trees of novel aspect, and revels in the sw'eet breath 
of the Cinnamon bushes from which the place takes its name. 
Great bushes of Hibiscus, with flowers of a dozen varieties and 
colours, are dotted about everywhere; Allamandas, to^, and 
Bougainvilleas of a deep rich purple, which make you pity ever 
after the pallid tint of those glass grown and decrepit sufferers which 
are doomed year -after year to do duty among the regulation “ six 
stove and greenhouse plants,” with which we are famdiar. I thii k 
