here were well-disposed, as she had heard that they sometimes met
strangers with a shower of arrows. And this in up-to-date,
electric-lighted Colombo! We might have been Captain Cook landing in
Tahiti, instead of peaceful travellers making their quiet way to an
hotel amidst a harmless crowd of tip-seeking coolies.

The unfamiliar is often unnecessarily alarming.

I remember a small ten-year-old white Bermudian boy who accompanied
his father to England for King George's coronation. The boy had never
before left his cedar-clad, sunlit native archipelago, and after the
ship had passed the Needles, and was making her way up the Solent, he
looked with immense interest at this strange land which had suddenly
appeared after three thousand miles of water. All houses in Bermuda
are whitewashed, and their owners are obliged by law to whitewash
their coral roofs as well. Bermuda, too, is covered with low
cedar-scrub of very sombre hue, and there are no tall trees. The boy,
a very sharp little fellow, was astonished at the red-brick of the
houses on the Isle of Wight, and at their red-tile or dark slate
roofs, and was also much impressed by the big oaks and lofty elms.
Finally he turned to his father as the ship was passing Cowes: "Do you
mean to tell me, Daddy, that the people living in these queer houses
in this odd country are really human beings like us, and that they
actually have human feelings like you and me?"




CHAPTER III