Colombo is very different, and I am glad that my first amazed sight of the tropics was at Galle, and not in a place, safe indeed, but eminently prosaic and uninspiring. Colombo is Ceylon, the land of business men, planters, jewel merchants and Dutch-hybrids; Galle was Lanka, that ancient island from which Wijayo, the invader, expelled the demons; the land of saints and heroes and kings; the land of romance and holy lore, of which the Mahawanso, “The Genealogy of the Great,” is the epic. There was no temptation to spend a needless hour in Colombo. Happily the train soon whirls the traveller into the midst of the baffling beauty of the scenery that lies between the sea and Kandy, scenery so lovely that the traveller feels inclined to rub his eyes and ask whether this can be real, whether he is not asleep, and tasting a dream-vision of paradise. Hatton, whither we were bound, is less beautiful, for the glory of the jungle has been ruthlessly swept away to make room for the tea-plant. Every available inch is under cultivation of what at first sight look like euonymus plants set out in a nursery gardener’s rows. Here and there are pretty villas, with gardens full of all manner of strange and attractive plants: for Hatton is a great centre, and, lying high, is very healthy, so there are many planters who come here for refreshment after months spent in the feverish damp of the lowland rubber and cocoanut plantations. And yet even here a man may turn his back upon the rupee-bearing tea-plant and feast his eyes upon a great mountain shaped like a crouching lion, or upon the distant majesty of Adam’s Peak, with its legends and its ghost. Here we stayed for some while, for there was plenty to do. Along the road, not more than a mile or so, if my memory serves me, from Hatton, there was a small Roman Catholic chapel and graveyard, to which some good priest came from time to time, to say mass, hear confessions, and shrive his flock. It was no more than a tiny plaster hut, fifteen feet by eight, with an altar, and on the altar two candlesticks on either side of the Figure on the Cross, to which some humble, pious soul had added as ornaments his two most precious treasures: two empty Huntley and Palmer biscuit-tins! It was a most touching offering, reminding me of the widow’s mite.