ON THE ROAD TO KANDY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2664, 5 April 1905, Page 80

ON THE ROAD TO KANDY.

I visited Kandy, in Ceylon — a four-hours' railway journey from Colombo, through valleys and high , hills of exceptional beauty- I have not seen anything to approach it for wealth of vegetation and picturesque loveliness. The railway zigj: zags the hills, and tlie tram is drawn by two powerful engines. You are- often on the edges of -nrgcinicag- qvorlonkijag^ galleys .hundreds cf feet below you; but you are quite safe, as you are on the solid rock of the mountain side. Our Blueskin cliffs are as nothing to it. The ' valleys are chiefly cultivated rlcefield. The rice they call "paddy" till dressed. Rice is always grown in water. The plantations are all laid out with watercourses to hold sufficient water to inundate the field, whatever the size may be; and down these hills or mountains' sides water is seen frequently flowing, and if a level bit of land is found on the mountain side, as well as in the valleys, you will see that they make use of it and of all the available water to cultivate any area they can enclose. Ten days before the rice is ripe for cutting they draw off the water so as to have the field dry for harvesting. Where they have not rice, cocoa, cocoanuts, grain, and green cattle-feed are growing. The railway itself is a splendid piece of engineering work. ' In and near Kandy there are tea plantations, and a tea factory at Pwadeniya. where they have a number of sorting and rolling mills at work, with packing rooms. I visited this factory. The process of handling is very simple, and done by native labour. In the teafields you 6ee a large number of native women, with their tea baskets slung across the shoulders, picking the leaves with both hands, at which they are very expert. The cocoa, a beautiful-looking plant, is also largely grown here.

To go to Kandy from Colombo is indeed a pleasant change. There is a sweetness about the mountain air of Kandy. There are good hotels — the Queen's being very central, with a charming promenade ?! roimd T {t and £° od boating on the lake m front. The Botanical Gardens at Kandy have a world-wide reputation. One might say that the whole place is more or less a botanical garden, but in this rare enclosure they have grouped to?i « i *" c best tfl ings grown in beautiful Ceylon. They have also in this garden a good museum and experimental farm. When in the garden your attention is called to the Bat road. In this road there are a great number of bats (or flying foxes), which in the daytime look like a lot of dead seeds hanging from the branches of me immense bamboo trees. A native will start them off by hammering the stalks, and these apparently lifeless things unfold themselves and commence flying round in flocks. They are about the size of seagulls.

A FEAST DAT".

At Kandy, on Saturday, January 21, 1905 —Full Moon Day,— there was an offering R?«Mif ? ?T' dav T- an an r ™al affair-at the .Buddhist Temple, one of the most important m Ceylon and throughout India. The original Buddha tooth is said to be enclosed m the upper portion of this temple, but no outsider is permitted to see it. During worship I went with a friend and guides through the temple, and so great was thecruj?h that it was very difficult to get through or to get out. In going" through you had to exercise the greatest oare not to tread on the worshippers, some kneeling and others prostrate before the Buddha images. The guides were careful to explain that these images were not worshipped, but were merely representations on which to concentrate the thoughts. Some of the paintings in the buildings are vile. The chief lessons to be gathered from these fiends of the walls to a Buddhist is to show 1 to what a horrible condition of revolting ugliness you may fall by being transgressors of the moral law. This Kandy temple is insignifi-oant-looking when compared with others I have se&n. The principal English church is St. f Paul's. The Roman Catholic Bishop resides here, close io the Roman Catholic Cathedral. There are also many Wesleyan churches and schools, Baptists, Salvation Army, etc. In Kandy they have a delightful ■olace to live > in — possibly too delightful, but for the excitement and worry necessarily arising in competing for converts to the various forms of the Christian religion. I axost, now return to