One morning the screw has stopped, and the sun rises, and the morning mist lifts, to show us an open bay into which the surf dashes unrestrained, and which is fringed on one side with a thick wood of cocoa-nut palms and tropical undergrowth, with here and there a bungalow or a little hut, while on the other side of the bay a road runs along the base of stone-faced ramparts covered with the freshest, greenest turf, and leads up to a seventeenth-century gateway, by which a crowd of people are passing in and out. Within the walls are the red and purple tiled roofs, and strong tropical lights and shadows of Galle. It is an exquisite scene to wake up to from the formless solitude of mid-ocean. Paddling round about the vessel are swarms of small craft, barge-like boats, and long picturesque canoes scarcely more than a foot wide, made of a hollowed tree, and balanced on the tossing swell by a small beam fastened parallel to them by outriggers six or eight feet long and resting on the water. They are manned by natives vociferously vending newspapers, fruit, or trinkets, or bargaining to take passengers ashore. Ashore all go as soon as possible, and through the gateway, and up a street shaded by a green avenue, till the great Oriental Hotel is reached, the large broad verandah of which is crowded with people in all the strange costumes and head-gear of Anglo-Indians, talking, flirting, smoking, eating, drinking, bargaining, and abusing the (at this time of year) more than Indian heat. They are passengers going to, or returning from, India and China. For Galle is the Rugby Junction of Anglo-Asiatic traffic, where the China and Australia steamers disgorge their passengers into the larger vessel from Calcutta and Madras—many rills flowing into one stream—and there are often a couple of days to be spent here waiting—days inexpressibly full of interest and enjoyment to those to whom the scenes of India and of the tropics are new and unfamiliar.