Mr Fordyce kindly engaged a vehicle of a somewhat antique structure to convey us as far as Neura-Ellia, a distance of fifty miles. After that we should at length have to engage horses and bullocks to carry our tents and baggage. Although I found the journey exceedingly interesting, as we met with no exciting adventure I will pass over it rapidly. The road for some miles led along the banks of the rapid and turbulent Mahawelliganga. We crossed it by a bridge of a single arch, 90 feet high, with a span of 200 feet. We were told that during the rains of the monsoons the water has been known to rise 60 feet in its bed, carrying carcasses of elephants and huge trees in its current. By the side of the road were numerous shops or bazaars, kept by low country Singhalese, for the sale of all sorts of commodities to the country people. The Kandyans have a strong prejudice against engaging in trade, and indeed dislike to mix at all with strangers. They therefore, when able, perch their residences in the most out-of-the-way and inaccessible positions. The latter are the Highlanders, while the Singhalese are the Lowlanders of Ceylon. The Kandyans have a strong attachment and veneration for their chiefs, by whom, however, they were cruelly oppressed, and both races possess the vices inherent to a long-continued slavery--a want of truthfulness and honesty; at the same time they possess the virtue of strong family affection and respect for their parents and elders. At Gampola, once the capital of the kingdom, there is a rest-house where we stopped. We had now reached the region where the first successful attempt at the systematic cultivation of coffee was made in the island. It had been tried in several places in the low country, but always had failed. Sir Edward Barnes, the great benefactor of Ceylon, first produced it on an upland estate of his own, in 1825, since which time the export from the island has increased to 67,453,680 pounds, annually. A great stimulus was given to the cultivation of coffee in Ceylon in consequence of the blacks in the West Indies, when emancipated from slavery, refusing to work; but in after-years, from the wildest speculation and the injudicious employment of capital, many of the English who had endeavoured to form estates had no means left to continue their cultivation, and wide-spread ruin was the result. Now, however, those who are able to reside on their property, by judicious management, find the cultivation a most profitable employment for their capital, in spite of the expense of bringing up rice for their labourers, and the destruction caused by winds, insects, caterpillars, wild cats, monkeys, squirrels, and rats. As the natives cannot be depended on as labourers, except in the first process of clearing the forest, the estates are cultivated by coolies, who come over from Malabar and the Coromandel Coast, as the Irish do in the reaping season to England, to find employment.