nths since of seeing
its official delegates to the Pan-American Congress at Rio de Janeiro
set forth in a steamship flying the red flag of Great Britain.

The most remarkable accomplishment in the material history of the world
is that the United States secured her commercial supremacy without
possessing a merchant marine. It is one of the marvels of modern times,
surely.

CHAPTER II

COLOMBO, CEYLON'S COSMOPOLITAN SEAPORT

A modern man of business might believe that Bishop Heber of Calcutta
wove into irresistible verse a tremendous advertisement for Ceylon real
estate, but repelled investors by a sweeping castigation of mankind,
when he wrote:

What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.

In tens of thousands of Christian churches the praises of Ceylon are
thus sung every Sunday, and will be as long as the inhabitants of
America and Great Britain speak the English language. Some of the
divine's statements, to be acceptable as impartial testimony, require
modification; for the natural charms of the island are not so sweepingly
perfect, and there man is far above the Asian average. Hymnists, it may
be inferred, write with some of the license of poets. No part of
England's great realm, nevertheless, is more beautiful than the crown
colony of Ceylon in the Indian Ocean.

[Illustration: THE JETTY AT COLOMBO]

An Eastbound traveler during the long run from Aden hears much of the
incomparable island of palms, pearls, and elephants; and every waggish
shipmate haunts smoke room and ladies' saloon waiting for the
opportunity to point out the lighthouse on Minecoy Island in the
Maldives as "the Light of Asia." Four hundred miles further and your
good ship approaches Colombo. The great breakwater, whose first stone
was laid by Albert Edward, is penetrated at last, and the polyglot and
universal harbor of call unfolds like a fan.

There's music within; the breezes bring proof of this. Surely, it is
Bishop Heber's trite stanzas repeated in unison by the forgiving
populace--they are sung everywhere, and why not in Ceylon's great
seaport? The ship churns forward to her moorings. It is singing; there
is no mistaking it. But the air! Does it deal with "spicy breezes," and
"pleasing prospects?" No; it is a sort of chant. Listen again. Ah, it is
Lottie Collins's masterpiece, not Bishop Heber's: it is "Ta-ra-ra boom
de-ay." And the c