The Pearl of India, Maturin Murray Ballou [best english books to read for beginners .TXT] 📗

its prime five or six hundred years before the Christian era, while some of its crumbling monuments belong to a much earlier age. It is confidently believed by many students of history to be the Ophir of the Hebrews; and the fact that it still abounds in rubies, sapphires, amethysts, garnets, and other precious stones, seems, in a degree, to corroborate this supposition. An intelligent estimate as to the aggregate value of the gems exported from Ceylon during the long past places it at so enormous a figure that we decline to give it in this connection, though fully realizing that the yield has been going on uninterruptedly for a period of two or three thousand years. But aside from this very attractive feature, it is, as a whole, the most beautiful island of the East, producing many other gems besides those of a mineral nature. "It is truly impossible to exaggerate the natural beauty of Ceylon," says the author of "The Light of Asia," and adds: "The island is, in fact, one prodigious garden, where the forces of nature almost oppress and tyrannize the mind, so strong and lavish is the vegetation." Marco Polo, who visited it in the thirteenth century, said that it was the choicest island of its size on the earth; and though, in the dim light of such information as was obtainable in his day, he made some grotesquely incorrect statements relating to the country, he was most certainly right in this superlative praise. He adds that the territory of Ceylon was much larger in former times than in his day, a great part of it having crumbled away and sunk into the sea. This is an important conclusion, with which our modern geographers are very ready to agree, though conjecture only can say to what extent it may have occurred.

As already mentioned, the arboreal and floral display is glorious beyond expression, forming a very paradise for botanists. Nature seems in this latitude to revel in blossoms of novel and fascinating species. Moisture and heat seek here an outlet to expand their fructifying powers. Situated in the path of the two monsoons, the southwest from the Indian Ocean, and the northeast from the Bay of Bengal, there is hardly a month of the year without more or less rain in Ceylon; vegetation is therefore always green and leafage luxuriant. In the jungle, large and brilliant flowers are seen blooming upon tall trees, while the eye is attracted by others very sweet and tiny in the prolific undergrowth, nestling among creepers and climbing ferns. In fact, the flora is endless in variety and intoxicating in fragrance. Perfume and bloom run riot everywhere. It would be vain to attempt an enumeration of the myriad examples, but memory is quick to recall the charming pitcher plant, the lotus,—its flower eight inches in diameter,—the yellow jessamine, the gorgeous magnolia, with innumerable orchids in their perfection of form and color, not forgetting the orange-hued gloriosa, and the beautiful vine bearing the wild passion-flower. There is also the large pearl-hued convolvulus which blossoms only at night, known in Ceylon as "the moon flower," and conspicuous through the dimness by its radiant whiteness. Many of the orchids exhibit a most singular similitude to animals and beautiful birds in their unspeakable and sweet variety. At first sight, a collection of them strikes one like a bevy of gorgeous butterflies and humming-birds, flitting among the green leaves. It seems as if Nature had created them in one of her happiest and most frolicsome moods,—"so true it is," says Macaulay, "that Nature has caprices which Art cannot imitate." Occasionally the senses are charmed by the fragrant, yellow-flowered champac, held sacred by the Hindus, from the wood of which the small images of Buddha are carved for the temples. Here, too, we have the odorous frangipane, the flower which Columbus found in such abundance on first landing in Cuba. Was it indigenous, one would like to know, in both of these tropical islands so very far apart? It is a tall plant, with few branches except at the top, but having fleshy shoots with a broad-spread, single leaf. The sensitive plant, which is such a delicate house ornament with us, fairly enamels the earth in this island, growing wild from Adam's Peak to Point de Galle, multiplying its dainty, bell-like pink blossoms, mingled with the delicate feathery acacia. Growing so exposed, and in weed-like abundance, it is natural to suppose that it would become hardened, as it were, to rough usage; but it is not so, as it retains all its native properties, in exaggerated form, if possible. Our puny little hothouse specimens are not more delicate or sensitive to the human touch than is this Ceylon mimosa. It is the most impressible of all known plants, and is appropriately named. Curious experiments prove this. If a person will fix his eyes upon a special branch and slowly approach it, the plant is seen gradually to wilt and shrink within itself, as it were, before it is touched by the observer's hand. It is endowed with an inexplicable intelligence or instinct, and what appears to be a dread as regards rude contact with human beings. A few years since, the author was at Cereto, in the island of Cuba, where he was the guest of an English physician who was also a coffee planter. While sitting with the family on the broad piazza which formed the front of the bungalow, a thrifty sensitive plant was recognized and made the subject of remark. The doctor called his young daughter of eleven years from the house.

"Lena," said he, "go and kiss the mimosa."

The child did so, laughing gleefully, and came away. The plant gave no token of shrinking from contact with the pretty child!

"Now," said our host, "will you touch the plant?"

Rising to do so, we approached it with one hand extended, and before it had come fairly in contact, the nearest spray and leaves wilted visibly.

"The plant knows the child," said the doctor, "but you are a stranger."

It was a puzzling experience, which seemed to endow the mimosa with human intelligence.

One brings away especially a vivid memory of the brilliant scarlet and golden bloom which covers the flamboyer so densely as almost to hide from view its foliage of velvet green. Only in far-away, mid-ocean Hawaii does the traveler see this gorgeous tree so perfectly developed.

The former superintendent of the Royal Botanical Gardens near Kandy, whither we shall take the reader in due time, is a scientific botanist, and an enthusiast in his profession. He tells us that he classified nearly three thousand indigenous plants, which is double the flora of Great Britain, and about one tenth of all the species in the world yet described. Thirty of these are declared to be found only upon this island. If correct, this is certainly a very remarkable fact, and forms an additional incentive for exploration on the part of naturalists.

Any reader of these pages who can conveniently visit Cambridge, Mass., should not fail to enjoy the unique and comprehensive collection of specimens representing the flora of Ceylon, now in the Agassiz Museum. The material is glass, although it seems to be wax, but so perfectly has the work been done, under direction of Professor George L. Goodale, of Harvard College, as to be indeed realistic. We have called this collection unique, and it is absolutely so. Bostonians can find no more charming local attraction with which to entertain appreciative visitors from abroad than this in the department of botany at the institution named.

There is a constant unvarying aspect of green pervading the scenery of Ceylon, owing to the perennial nature of the vegetation. The trees do not shed their leaves at any fixed period of the year. The ripe and withered foliage drops off, but it is promptly replaced by new and delicate leaves, whose exquisite hues when first expanding rival the blossoms themselves in beauty of color. If fruit is plucked, a flower quickly follows and another cluster ripens,—Nature is inexhaustible. There is no winter interval or sleep for the vegetation, no period of the sere and yellow leaf, as with us in the colder north. The fruits and flowers are ever present, yet there is a certain resemblance to spring and autumn, as we are accustomed to see them. The shrubs and trees are decked more or less with young fresh leaves at all times, while the ground is strewn with those in a state of decay which have ripened and faded out of life. The latter with us are the harbingers of winter, the former coming only with the opening spring. Thus it is that we call it the reign of eternal summer, for all out-of-doors seems like a conservatory of choice flowers and birds of dazzling hues. Although these highly colored creatures of the feathered tribe, like the butterflies, are almost innumerable, one is forced to admit that there are few sweet songsters among them. Paroquets in mottled green, practicing their dainty ways, present themselves in flocks, lighting upon the nearest bushes and branches with a winning fearlessness and confidence. They will slip quietly away if one attempts to catch them, but when taken young they are easily domesticated, accommodating themselves to human associations with the utmost facility, and though they are left free to seek the woods and jungle when they choose, they are sure to return voluntarily to the cabins of the natives, to be fed and petted by human hands.

One variety of the green paroquet has a curious rose-colored ring about its neck, like the turtle-dove, so delicate and uniform as to seem almost artificial. The natives call it the love-bird. The youthful Singhalese women, like those of Japan, take great pains in the arrangement of their ebon-black hair. It was a unique and very pretty sight observed one day in the native district of Colombo, when a pair of live paroquets' heads, forming the apex to a native woman's abundant coil, were seen coquettishly twisting and turning hither and thither. The little beauties were quite content, perched up there amid their mistress' wealth of tresses. They were hardly confined, though their bodies were laid cosily beneath the braids as though resting in their native nest. What a field this tropical isle would have been for Audubon!

One often sees hovering about the gardens and bungalows a little bird as large as an English sparrow, called the Ceylon bird of paradise, but which does not deserve that name. It has a black head, a neutral-tinted body, and a long tail, five times the length of its body, consisting of pure white feathers. Its only marked peculiarity, so far as is apparent, consists in its singular and disproportionate tail. It has a little fretful, discordant twitter, but no connected notes. The Singhalese name for the bird escapes us at this writing.

Ornithologists make out a list of over three hundred distinct species of birds in Ceylon, among which the largest variety is found in the parrot family, very nearly equaled by the wading and aquatic tribes.

CHAPTER III.