cinnamon delights; such are the Cinnamon Gardens, in which
I delight not. They are an imposition, and they only serve as an
addition to the disappointments of a visitor to Colombo. In fact, the
whole place is a series of disappointments. You see a native woman
clad in snow-white petticoats, a beautiful tortoiseshell comb fastened
in her raven hair; you pass her--you look back--wonderful! she has a
beard! Deluded stranger, this is only another disappointment; it is a
Cingalese Appo--a man--no, not a man--a something male in petticoats; a
petty thief, a treacherous, cowardly villain, who would perpetrate the
greatest rascality had he only the pluck to dare it. In fact, in this
petticoated wretch you see a type of the nation of Cingalese.

On the morning following my arrival in Ceylon, I was delighted to see
several persons seated at the "table-d'hote" when I entered the room,
as I was most anxious to gain some positive information respecting the
game of the island, the best localities, etc., etc. I was soon engaged
in conversation, and one of my first questions naturally turned upon
sport.

"Sport!" exclaimed two gentlemen simultaneously--"sport! there is no
sport to be had in Ceylon!"--"at least the race-week is the only sport
that I know of," said the taller gentleman.

"No sport!" said I, half energetically and half despairingly. "Absurd!
every book on Ceylon mentions the amount of game as immense; and as to
elephants--"

Here I was interrupted by the same gentleman. "All gross
exaggerations," said he--"gross exaggerations; in fact, inventions to
give interest to a book. I have an estate in the interior, and I have
never seen a wild elephant. There may be a few in the jungles of
Ceylon, but very few, and you never see them."

I began to discover the stamp of my companion from his expression, "You
never see them." Of course I concluded that he had never looked for
them; and I began to recover front the first shock which his
exclamation, "There is no sport in Ceylon!" had given me.

I subsequently discovered that my new and non-sporting acquaintances
were coffee-planters of a class then known as the Galle Face planters,
who passed their time in cantering about the Colombo race-course and
idling in the town, while their estates lay a hundred miles distant,
uncared for, and naturally ruining their proprietors.

That same afternoon, to my delight and surprise, I met an old
Gloucestershire friend in an off