ery" by the
government--divers, who may secure a gem of price in an hour's work, or
may return home empty-handed. Their neighbors on the platform are
seafarers coming with the embassy from the Sultan of the Maldive
Islands, bringing to the governor of Ceylon the annual tribute
sanctioned by custom, and the renewed assurances of loyalty to Edward
VII. Close by them, and taking a profound interest in a group of
European ladies stepping from a launch below, are three black girls in
the garb of Catholic Sisters of Charity, whose chains and crucifixes are
of unusual size.

With a conscious air of proprietorship of the British Empire, khaki-clad
Tommy Atkins comes down the pier, attended by the inevitable fox
terrier. Following close on his heels is a towering man of ebon
complexion, with three stripes of ashes and the wafer of humility on his
forehead. He is barefooted, and his solitary garment is a piece of
cotton with which he has girded his loins; he is abundantly lacquered
with cocoanut oil, to protect him from contracting a cold from the too
rigorous "spicy breezes" of Lanka's isle. A stranger would say he was a
penitent wayfarer of God, not worth the smallest coin of the East. In
one hand he carries an overfilled valise, and in the other a sunshade of
immaculate white: the initiated recognize him to be a chettie, easily
worth lakhs of rupees, who is presumably embarking for Rangoon, and
there to purchase a cargo of rice.

Hark! There is commotion and much noise at the jetty entrance. Can it be
an alarm of fire, or have the customs officials at the gates apprehended
a flagrant smuggler? Oh, no; it is merely Great Britain arriving on the
scene in the person of a smart-looking tea-planter who has honked down
in his motor-car to see a comrade off on the mail steamer; incidentally,
some of the noise proceeds from a group of sailors on leave from a
battleship who are wrangling with 'rickshaw men as to proper payment for
having been hauled about the city on a sight-seeing tour. And so it goes
in Colombo. Each day presents a picture not to be adequately described
by a less gifted writer than Kipling.

[Illustration: HINDU SILVERSMITHS. COLOMBO]

Colombo is the westermost town of that great division of Asia wherein
subject races--black, brown and yellow--haul the white man in
jinrickshaws. No institution of the East stamps the superiority of the
European more than this menial office of the native. Probably every
American w