The natural beauties of Ceylon and Colombo are beyond description. It is almost the only place in the world, save perhaps Japan and Venice, that is just as good as advertised. The wonderful groves of cocoanut palms, banana trees, and I know not what other tropical wonders in every direction, are outlined against the soft blue of the eastern sky. All along the sea-front of Colombo the palms stretch in great avenues and groves from the Galle-Face Hotel to Mount Lavinia, a bluff by the sea, some four or five miles down the coast. If it is beautiful at the seashore, it is even more wonderful in the interior, where luxuriant tropic hills rise sharply above jungle-clad valleys, and tea plantations abound. In the interior one finds wild elephants in great droves, and the catching and taming of these for domestic use is not one of the least important occupations on the island. Other places in the tropics are so fiercely hot that one fails to appreciate the glories that are on every hand, but here the breezes from the sea, that spring up at night, cool the air so that one can enjoy the advantages of the tropics, and yet sleep as comfortably as in a more northern climate. One might spend weeks in this glorious country, but as has been the case on my previous visits, I was pressed for time. A little wretched B. I. boat was just starting for the tip of India, and we transferred to her. The reader in search of accuracy and facts may as well know at the start that the writer passed but five days in the Indian Empire, and, therefore, what follows is not to be regarded as an authoritative discussion of conditions there. My impressions began on first boarding the steamer at Colombo for the nearest Indian port, which rejoices in the name of Teutocorin. Behind a table on the deck of the steamer sat a large and forbidding party in a brilliant uniform, before whom I was dragged by the first deck-hand who discovered me wandering about the boat with the Black Prince at my heels, trying to find an unoccupied cabin in which to deposit my impedimenta. The man in uniform, it appeared, was an officer of the Indian customs, and he at once pointed out his importance in the social scheme, and, standing me up before him like a prisoner at the bar, started on an intimate investigation of my personal history. Large pads of paper in forms of printed matter were piled about, and while he was busy asking questions, you are equally busy signing papers to the effect that you are not a pirate, and not afflicted with the plague, and so forth and so on. At last the supreme moment arrives. Backed by all the majesty of the law and the dignity of his brilliant uniform, he asks you in an impressive whisper if you have any fire-arms. Here was where he landed heavily on my expedition. I did have fire-arms of all kinds and varieties. For a moment it looked as though I was in for a life sentence. Even Morris turned pale in the confusion which followed. The theory seems to be that every