Page 2 Advertisements Column 3

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume 13, Issue 1065, 13 July 1869, Page 2

A Peep at a Galle Hotel. - A correspondent of the Ceylon Observer gives the following faithful description of the company to be often mob with at the Oriental Hotel, Galle. " The weather-beaten rugged countenances of a few old Australian colonists of over a score of years' standing, contrast strangely 'with /the dried-up, slmvelled look of the old Indian, or with the fresh rosy colour on youthful cheeks from home; young men are there bound for the furthest portsj -of Cathay, the plains of Bengal, the far North- West, or for the sunny but more healthful Austral couutries. Passengers who, on the morrow, "would be on their way to the uttermost parts of the earthto Shanghai, Hongkong, Japan, Singapore, Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, New Zealand, Sydney, New Caledonia, Melbourne, or back to Old England,— arc for the night gathered together as onelarge family party, and seem to look and act as such." Here is an old gentleman relating his experiences in Bass's Straits some twenty years ago ; there is another going home after twenty-five years spent (amidst sugar cane latterly) on the alluvial plains of Queensland ; and yet a third discoursing on : his life in the Punjab — while doubtless in" another corner may be heard crack stories about John Chinaman and the Far East. A sprinkling of redcoats and of officers in the neat uniform of the Peninsular and Oriental Company enliven a scene which is rendei'ed still gayer by a goodly intermixture of the fiur sex, who whether from Sydney, Melbourne, or the, scores <6,fpld Englaud, are all dressed' in the lieiguf of fashion,"