shelf
cut out of a hillside, and it winds along climbing ever up with a
towering wall on one side and a precipice on the other. The little
stations have hardly room to wedge in, but they are very gay with
flowers--indeed the whole line is, for great yellow daisies and the
terra-cotta blossoms of a pretty creeper called lantana climb
everywhere. As we get higher and higher we can look down and see the
country spread out before us like a map; it is cut up into neat little
fields and would be like a draught-board except that the fields are
often on different levels one above the other, made on land cut out from
the hillsides. These people grow rice, which is to them what maize is to
the Egyptian. In the fields, before it has been threshed, it is known as
paddy. They live on rice and very little else, and seem to thrive on it.
Rice pudding if repeated every day for a month at both breakfast and
dinner would grow monotonous, but the man of the East does not find it
so. His rice is not cooked with milk but with water, and is eaten with a
little curry made of fish or vegetables to give it flavour.

Higher yet, and soon we see the hills laid out with rows of a tiny
dark-green bush, planted as neatly as rows of turnips; this is the tea
for which Ceylon is famous, and we shall get a nearer look at it
presently. That and rubber are the staple crops that Englishmen come out
here to raise, but they also grow coffee and other things too.

[Illustration: DOWN IN THE PADDYFIELDS.]

When we arrive at Kandy there is no sign of anything to meet us and no
white man on the platform, so I make inquiries of the stationmaster, who
is a Eurasian, which means that he has some white blood in his veins. He
knows Mr. and Mrs. Hunter perfectly well, he says, though he has not
seen them for a day or two. If, as I say, I wired, they are certain to
send in a trap to meet us; but it may have been delayed or still be in
the town. If we care to go up and look round, and come back again, he
will meantime make inquiries. With many thanks we take his advice. The
town is quite near and we find the main part of it built around a pretty
little lake near which is the famous Temple of the Tooth. This is a
massive building visited by thousands of pilgrims, because it enshrines
a relic of great sanctity, nothing less than the tooth of Buddha! What
Mohammed is to the Mohammedans so Buddha is to the Buddhists, among
whom the greater part of the people of Ceylon may