, or Black Town, we
see a tame parrot or a pet monkey confined within certain bounds by a
small chain. If the former, he is likely to be imitating the
boisterous exclamations of the children; if the latter, finding no
mischief possible, he sits chin in hand, with a ludicrously grave
expression on his too human features. The ever-present crows take good
care to keep out of the monkey's reach, but perch familiarly and
fearlessly anywhere else about the cabins. There are several varieties
of monkeys in the island. The black wanderoo of Ceylon with white
whiskers comes nearest in its resemblance to the human face. He stands
three feet high, and weighs between seventy and eighty pounds, being
remarkable for muscular strength. The lower and the upper jaw are in a
direct line with the forehead, while most of the race have projecting
jaws.

The streets and environs of Constantinople are rendered hardly more
disagreeable by the presence of mongrel curs than is Black Town,
Colombo. Dogs abound, thoroughly useless creatures, which should have
been born jackals, and which are perhaps partly breeds from that
source. They are melancholy, half-starved, wretched, and mangy
creatures, sleeping all day, and prowling about at night in search of
some stray bit of carrion which has escaped the vigilance of the
crows. Why they are tolerated no one can say, neither does any one
acknowledge their ownership. Occasionally one runs mad, causing by his
bite a half-dozen natives to do likewise, when death is certain.
Hydrophobia is never cured, not even by the devil-dancers of Ceylon.
The normal appearance of these dogs is that of abject fear, as they
move about with heads drooping and their tails pressed close between
their hind legs. A harsh word sends them off at top speed, while a
kind one brings out their instinctive fondness for the human race.
Still, they are nuisances in Ceylon, and of no earthly good to any
mortal.

Evil odors are inseparable from the native quarters. That goes without
saying, and it is surprising that pestilence does not run riot here.
Dirt and contagious diseases certainly thrive in the same atmosphere,
and yet one often sees sanitary laws, as we construe them,
deliberately outraged without any such results as our best reason
would lead us to expect. The author was in Rio Janeiro not long since,
at a time when the yellow fever was proving fatal to fifty or sixty
persons daily. In the Plaza Don Pedro Second, numbers of