was the perfection of everything that was dirty and
uncomfortable. The toughest possible specimen of a beef-steak,
black bread and potatoes were the choicest and only viands
obtainable for an invalid. There was literally nothing else; it
was a land of starvation. But the climate! what can I say to
describe the wonderful effects of such a pure and unpolluted air?
Simply, that at the expiration of a fortnight, in spite of the
tough beef, and the black bread and potatoes, I was as well and
as strong as I ever bad been; and in proof of this I started
instanter for another shooting excursion in the interior.

It was impossible to have visited Newera Ellia, and to have
benefited in such a wonderful manner by the climate, without
contemplating with astonishment its poverty-stricken and
neglected state.

At that time it was the most miserable place conceivable. There
was a total absence of all ideas of comfort or arrangement. The
houses were for the most part built of such unsubstantial
materials as stick and mud plastered over with mortar - pretty
enough in exterior, but rotten in ten or twelve years. The only
really good residence was a fine stone building erected by Sir
Edward Barnes when governor of Ceylon. To him alone indeed are
we indebted for the existence of a sanitarium. It was he who
opened the road, not only to Newera Ellia, but for thirty-six
miles farther on the same line to Badulla. At his own expense he
built a substantial mansion at a cost, as it is said, of eight
thousand pounds, and with provident care for the health of the
European troops, he erected barracks and officers' quarters for
the invalids.