CHAPTER  XII.



     ATTRACTIONS FOR' THE TRAVELLER AND VISITOR.*



The Voyage a Pleasure Trip—Historical Monuments, Vegetation, etc.—

    Variety of Climate—Colombo, the Capital—Kandy, the Highland

    Capital—Nuwara Eliya, the  Sanatorium—The Horton Plains-

    Adam's Peak—Uva and its long-delayed Railway—Ancient Cities

    of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa—Occasional Pearl Fisheries-

    Probable Expense of a Visit to Ceylon—The Alleged Inconveniences

    of Tropical Life.

   TO the traveller and visitor Ceylon offers more attrac¬

    tions even than to the capitalist and would-be planter.

It is  a joke with  disappointed men that the  stranger

can see on the hills of Ceylon the graves of more British

sovereigns than  of Kandyan kings! But  the latter are

not wanting, and no  dependency of Britain—India  not

excepted—presents more attractions than Cejdon to  the

intelligent  traveller, to the botanist, the antiquarian or

the man of science, the orientalist, or  even to the politician

and the sociologist.   Visitors from  America  and North

India have said that Ceylon, for natural beauty, historical

and social interest, is  the " show-place of the universe,"

and that, as such, it might well, in  these days of travelling

sightseers, be leased by either a Barnum or Cook !   The

voyage of twenty-one to twenty-eight days from London

to Colombo  (of fourteen to twenty-one from Brindisi or

Marseilles) on a first-class steamer of any of half a  dozen

lines competing at from £40 to £65  for  the single, or  less

                   * Sec Appendix No. I.

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