very soft, and very enticing in flavour.

* * * * *

From Singapore we follow Madame Pfeiffer to Point de Galle, in Ceylon.
The appearance of this fair and fertile island from the sea is the theme
of every traveller's praise. "It was one of the most magnificent sights
I ever beheld," says Madame Pfeiffer, "to see the island soaring
gradually from the sea, with its mountain-ranges growing more and more
distinctly defined, their summits lighted by the sun, while the dense
cocoa-groves, and hills and plains, lay shrouded in shadow." Above the
whole towers the purple mass of Adam's Peak; and the eye rests in every
direction on the most luxuriant foliage, with verdurous glades, and
slopes carpeted with flowers.

Point de Galle presents a curious mixture of races. Cingalese,
Kanditons, Tamils from South India, and Moormen, with crimson caftans and
shaven crowns, form the bulk of the crowds that throng its streets; but,
besides these, there are Portuguese, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Parsees,
Englishmen, Malays, Dutchmen, and half-caste burghers, and now and then a
veiled Arabian woman, or a Veddah, one of the aboriginal inhabitants of
the island. Sir Charles Dilke speaks of "silent crowds of tall and
graceful girls, wearing, as we at first supposed, white petticoats and
bodices; their hair carried off the face with a decorated hoop, and
caught at the back by a high tortoise-shell comb. As they drew near,
moustaches began to show, and I saw that they were men; whilst walking
with them were women naked to the waist, combless, and far more rough and
'manly' than their husbands. Petticoat and chignon are male institutions
in Ceylon."