Ceylon, a British possession, is an island in the Indian Ocean, lying southeast of the peninsula of Hindustan, and is covered with a rich luxuriance of tropical vegetation. The Singhalese are the most numerous of its inhabitants; they are devoted to Buddhism, the prevailing religion of the island. In Kandy, an inland town near the capital, the sacred tooth of Buddha is guarded with jealous care. Ceylon is rich in metals, minerals, and precious stones; its gems, such as sapphires, rubies, topaz, garnets, amethysts, and cats-eye, have been celebrated from time immemorial. The interior of the island abounds with birds of paradise and immense bats resembling the vampire. Animals, such as the elephant, bear, leopard, wild boar, deer, and monkeys, roam at will, while the crocodile, tortoise, and large lizards, infest the bogs of the jungle. A celebrated mountain visible from Colombo is Adam’s Peak, which attains the height of 7420 feet above sea-level. Colombo, the capital, a fortified city on the western side of the island, shaded by the trees of the cocoanut palm, is progressive as a maritime port and particularly as the entrepôt for the East India trade. The hotels are furnished with “punkahs,” while hammocks of rattan are stretched on every veranda. In addition to the native Singhalese, Hindus, Tamils, Moors, Malays, and Portuguese engage in various occupations, a large number of these being employed on the coffee and tea plantations. In the Prince of Wales Hotel I met some soldiers of the famous “Black Watch” who had participated in the Boer War and who had been sent to Colombo to recuperate; I accompanied them to their barracks, where we exchanged various curios. A large revenue is derived by the government from the pearl-fishery in the Gulf of Manaar, and whales are captured off the coast. Seven days were spent in the harbor of Colombo, after which our ship steamed across the Indian Ocean, and through the Straits of Malacca to Singapore, an island in the Straits Settlements, south of the Malay Peninsula, and eighty miles from the equator. It commands the highway leading from British India to China, and became a British possession by a treaty with the Sultan of Johore in the year 1824. Singapore is the entrepôt for the trade of the Malayan archipelago and China; its chief exports are tapioca, tin, tortoise-shell, camphor, coffee, nutmegs, gutta percha, and rattan. Situated on the south side of the island, the town has a very oriental appearance, and its inhabitants represent sixteen nationalities speaking different tongues, the most enterprising of these being the Chinese. Though very warm, the climate is healthy and it is seldom subjected to quarantine. For ages past the tiger has been a menace to Singapore, and the government’s archives record an average of three hundred Chinese and other natives carried off annually by these blood-thirsty man-eaters.