They reached Newera-Ellia late in the afternoon, and were glad to surrender their seats in the uncomfortable coach. They had found the air growing steadily cooler as they approached their destination, and as the afternoon advanced it became necessary for them to don their thick overcoats. A fire was burning in the parlor of the hotel, and our friends were not at all reluctant to accept some of the heat it threw out. There were carpets on the floors, and the walls of the house were made as though there was really a desire to exclude the cold rather than to welcome it. To the youths who had been so long in the tropics, and had struggled with the heat nearly every day and hour since their departure from Hong-Kong, it was rather a strange sensation to tread on soft carpets and sit around a cheerful fireplace, and they began to wonder whether they were really in Ceylon, or were dreaming. We will let the boys tell the story of their visit to this part of the island, which they did in their next letter to friends at home. Following the plan they had found so effective, they divided the labor and devoted themselves to different parts of the description; they did it so skilfully, that when they had finished the letter it appeared to have been the effort of but one person instead of two. Perhaps they had a hint from Doctor Bronson, and possibly they did the whole work without assistance; _quien sabe?_ CHAPTER XXI. SCENERY AT NEWERA-ELLIA.--ASCENT OF ADAM'S PEAK. Here is the letter referred to in the last chapter: "We have had a delightful experience since we left Kandy, and should have been very sorry to miss the journey to Newera-Ellia. The road winds in a zigzag among the hills, and sometimes we could look down hundreds of feet upon the torrents that foamed along through the valleys. For several miles the route follows the Mahavilla-Ganga, which is the largest river in Ceylon, and goes into the sea near Trincomalee; wherever the road crosses the river it does so on a substantial bridge, and at one place there is a suspension-bridge so high up that it made us dizzy to look over the side. [Illustration: A TROPICAL FERN.] "They tell us that twenty years ago the country was prettier than it now is, because the hills were then covered with dense forests of tropical trees and ferns, which have been cleared off to make room for coffee plantations. There is one charming valley called Kotmalee, which has a range of mountains on the south-east side, some of them several thousand feet high, and the Mahavilla-Ganga winds through it, sometimes presenting a smooth surface, and again broken into foam by the rapidity of its current over the rocks. At the end of the valley the mountains rise quite sharply, and we had a hard climb of fifteen miles to get from there to Newera-Ellia. The road ascends one foot in every fourteen, and you can readily understand that the horses had no easy work to drag the wagon up this steep incline.