e right stamp of a "better half"
for an emigrant's wife. According to his own description she is a
"good knock-about kind of a wife." I recollect seeing her, during a
press of work, rendering assistance to her Vulcan in a manner worthy of
a Cyclop's spouse. She was wielding an eighteen-pound sledgehammer,
sending the sparks flying at every blow upon the hot iron, and making
the anvil ring again, while her husband turned the metal at every
stroke, as if attending on Nasmyth's patent steam hammer.

It has been a great satisfaction to me that all the people whom I
brought out are doing well; even Henry Perkes, of elephant-jockeying
notoriety, is, I believe, prospering as a groom in Madras.

[1] Directed of course by her driver.

CHAPTER III.

Task Completed--The Mountain-top--Change in the Face of
Nature--Original Importance of Newera Ellia--"The Path of a Thousand
Princes"--Vestiges of Former Population--Mountains--The Highlands of
Ouva--Ancient Methods of Irrigation--Remains of Aqueducts--The Vale of
Rubies--Ancient Ophir--Discovery of Gold-Mineral Resources--Native
Blacksmiths.

In a climate like that of Newera Ellia, even twelve months make a great
change in the appearance of a new settlement; plants and shrubs spring
up with wonderful rapidity, and a garden of one year's growth, without
attendance, would be a wilderness.

A few years necessarily made a vast change in everything. All kinds of
experiments had been made, and those which succeeded were persevered
in. I discovered that excellent beer might be made at this elevation
(six thousand two hundred feet), and I accordingly established a small
brewery.

The solitary Leicester ram had propagated a numerous family, and a
flock of fat ewes, with their lambs, throve to perfection. Many
handsome young heifers looked very like the emigrant bull in the face,
and claimed their parentage. The fields were green; the axe no longer
sounded in the forests: a good house stood in the centre of
cultivation; a road of two miles in length cut through the estate, and
the whole place looked like an adopted "home." All the trials and
disappointments of the beginning were passed away, and the real was a
picture which I had ideally contemplated years before. The task was
finished.

In the interim, public improvements had not been neglected; an
extremely pretty church had been erected and a public reading-room
established; but, with the exception of one good house