The boats employed by these individuals were of two kinds.  The larger ones, which contained about forty persons, were very broad, and composed of boards joined together and fastened with the fibres of the cocoa-tree; the smaller ones were exactly like those I saw in Tahiti, save that they appeared still more dangerous.  The bottom was formed of the trunk of an extremely narrow tree, slightly hollowed out, and the sides of the planks are kept in their places by side and cross supports.  These craft rose hardly a foot and a half out of the water, and their greatest breadth did not average quite a foot.  There was a small piece of plank laid across as a seat, but the rower was obliged to cross his knees from want of room to sit with them apart.

The road, as I before mentioned, lay for the most part through forests of cocoa-trees, where the soil was very sandy and completely free from creepers and underwood; but near trees that did not bear fruit, the soil was rich, and both that and the trees covered with creepers in wild luxuriance.  There were very few orchids.

We crossed four rivers, the Tindurch, Bentock, Cattura, and Pandura, two by means of boats, two by handsome wooden bridges.

The cinnamon plantations commenced about ten miles from Colombo; and on this side of the town are all the country-houses of the Europeans.  They are very simple, shaded with cocoa-trees and surrounded with stone walls.  At 3 o’clock in the afternoon, we drove over two draw-bridges and through two fortified gateways into the town, which is far more pleasantly situated than Pointe de Galle, on account of its nearer proximity to the beautiful mountain ranges.

I only stopped a night here, and on the following morning again resumed my journey in the mail to the town of Candy, which is distant seventy-two miles.

We left on the 20th of October, at 5 o’clock in the morning.  Colombo is a very extensive town.  We drove through a succession of long, broad streets of handsome houses, all of which latter were surrounded by verandahs and colonnades.  I was very much startled at the number of persons lying stretched out at full length under these verandahs, and covered with white clothes.  I at first mistook them for corpses, but I soon perceived that their number was too great to warrant that supposition, and I then discovered that they were only asleep.  Many, too, began to move and throw off their winding-sheets.  I was informed that the natives prefer sleeping in this manner before the houses to sleeping inside of them.

The Calanyganga, an important river, is traversed by a long floating bridge; the road then branches off more and more from the sea-coast, and the character of the scenery changes.  The traveller now meets with large plains covered with fine plantations of rice, the green and juicy appearance of which reminded me of our own young wheat when it first shoots up in spring.  The forests were composed of mere leaved wood, the palms becoming at every step more rare; one or two might sometimes be seen, here and there, towering aloft like giants, and shading everything around.  I can imagine nothing more lovely than the sight of the delicate creepers attached to the tall stems of these palms and twining up to their very crests.