A REGULAR and uniform system of spelling of native names and other words has lately been brought into common use in India, and adopted by the Government. Not without hesitation I have decided upon ignoring this improvement, and confining myself to spellings known to and used by the English in England, for whom especially I am writing.

I am aware that there is no system in the spelling, and that it is scientifically absurd; nevertheless, the new Government spelling is not yet sufficiently well understood in England to warrant its use in a book intended for general circulation. The scientific spelling is not always an improvement to the eye, moreover: Talookdars of Oude may not be right, but it is a neater phrase than "Taâlulehdars of Awdh;" and it will probably be long before we in England write "kuli" for coolie, or adopt the spelling "Tátá hordes."

CHAPTER I.

MARITIME CEYLON.

WE failed to sight the Island of Cocoas, a territory where John Ross is king-a worthy Scotchman, who having settled down in mid-ocean, some hundreds of miles from any port, proceeded to annex himself to Java and the Dutch. On being remʊnstrated with, he was made to see his error; and, being appointed governor of and consul to himself and labourers, now hoists the union-jack, while his island has a red line drawn under its name upon the map. Two days after quitting John Ross's latitudes, we crossed the line in the heavy noonday of the equatorial belt of calms. The sun itself passed the equator the same day; so, after having left Australia at the end of autumn, I suddenly found myself in Asia in the early spring. Mist obscured the skies except at dawn and sunset, when there was a clear air, in which floated cirro-cumuli with flat basesclouds cut in half, as it seemed-and we were all convinced that Homer must have seen the Indian Ocean, so completely did the sea in the equatorial belt realize his epithet "purple or "wine-dark." All day long the flying fish-" those good and excellent creatures of God," as Drake styled them—were skimming over the water on every side. The Elizabethan captain, who knew their delicacy of taste, attributed their freedom from the usual slime of fish, and their wholesome nature, to "their continued exercise in both air and water." The heat was great, and I made the discovery that Australians as well as Americans can put their feet above their heads. It may be asserted that the height above the deck of the feet of passengers on board ocean steamers varies directly as the heat, and inversely as the number of hours before dinner.

In the afternoon of the day we crossed the line, we sighted a large East Indiaman lying right in our course, and so little way

was she making that, on coming up with her, we had to port our helm, in order not to run her down. She hailed us, and we lay-to while she sent a boat aboard us with her mail; for although she was already a month out from Calcutta and bound for London, our letters would reach home before she was round the Cape-a singular commentary upon the use of sailing ships in the Indian seas. Before the boat had left our side, the ships had floated so close together, through attraction, that we had to make several revolutions with the screw in order to prevent collision.

When we, who were all sleeping upon deck, were aroused by the customary growl from the European quartermaster of "Four o'clock, sir! Going to swab decks, sir! Get up, sir!” given with the flare of the lantern in our eyes, we were still more than a hundred miles from Galle; but before the sun had risen, we caught sight of Adam's Peak, a purple mass upon the northern sky, and soon we were racing with a French steamer from Saigon, and with a number of white-sailed native craft from the Maldives, Within a few hours, we were at anchor in a small bay, surrounded with lofty cocoa palms, in which were lying, tossed by a rolling swell, some dozen huge steamers, yard-arm to yard-arm—the harbour of Point de Galle. Every ship was flying her ensign, and in the damp hot air the old tattered union-jacks seemed brilliant crimson, and the dull green of the cocoa palms became a dazzling emerald. The scene wanted but the bright plumage of the Panama macaws.

Once seated in the piazza of the Oriental Company's hotel, the best managed in the East, I had before me a curious scene. Along the streets were pouring silent crowds of tall and graceful girls, as we at the first glance supposed, wearing white petticoats and boddices; their hair carried off the face with a decorated hoop, and caught at the back by a high tortoise-shell comb. As they drew near, moustaches began to show, and I saw that they were men, whilst walking with them were women naked to the waist, combless, and far more rough and "manly" than their husbands. Petticoat and chignon are male institutions in Ceylon, and time after time I had to look twice before I could fix the passer's sex. My rule at last became to set down everybody that was womanly as a man, and every:ody that was

manly as a woman. Cinghalese, Kandians, Tamils from South India, and Moormen with crimson caftans and shaven crowns, formed the body of the great crowd: but, besides these, there were Portuguese, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, Parsees, Englishmen, Malays, Dutchmen, and half-caste burghers, and now and then a veiled Arabian woman or a Veddah-one of the aboriginal inhabitants of the isle. Ceylon has never been independent, and in a singular mixture of races her ports bear testimony to the number of the foreign conquests.

Two American missionaries were among the passers-by, but one of them, detecting strangers, came up to the piazza in search of news. There had been no loss of national characteristics in these men ;-they were brim-full of the mixture of earnestness and quaint profanity which distinguishes the New England puritan: one of them described himself to me as "just a kind of journeyman soul-saver, like."

The Australian strangers were not long left unmolested by more serious intruders than grave Vermonters. The cry of "baksheesh "—an Arabian word that goes from Gibraltar to China, and from Ceylon to the Khyber Pass, and which has reached us in the form of "boxes" in our phrase "Christmasboxes"-was the first native word I heard in the East, at Galle, as it was afterwards the last, at Alexandria. One of the beggars was an Albino, fair as a child in a Hampshire lane; one of those strange sports of nature from whom Cinghalese tradition asserts the European races to be sprung.

hotel servants, and

“Ah safeer, ah amtit, ah !" was

The beggars were soon driven off by the better licensed plunderers began their work. rupal, ah imral, ah mooney stone, ah opal, ah the cry from every quarter, and jewel-sellers of all the nations of the East descended on us in a swarm. "Me givee you written guarantee dis real stone;" "Yes, dat real stone; but dis good stone-dat no good stone-no water. Ah, see!" "Dat no good stone. Ah, sahib, you tell good stone; all dese bad stone, reg'lar England stone. You go by next ship? No? Dese ship-passenger stone

Ah, den you come see me shop. humbuk stone. Ship gone, den you come me shop; see good stone. When you come? eh? when you come ?" "Ah safeer,

ah catty-eye, ah pinkee collal !” Meanwhile every Galle

dwelling European, at the bar of the hotel, was adding to the din by shouting to the native servants, Boy, turn out these fellows, and stop their noise." This cry of "boy" is a relic of the old Dutch times it was the Hollander's term for his slave, and hence for every member of the inferior race. The first servant that I heard called "boy" was a tottering white-haired old man. The gems of Ceylon have long been famed. One thousand three hundred and seventy years ago, the Chinese records tell us that Ceylon, then tributary to the empire, sent presents to the Brother of the Moon, one of the gifts being a "lapis-lazuli spittoon." It is probable that some portion of the million and a half pounds sterling which are annually absorbed in this small island, but four-fifths the size of Ireland, is consumed in the setting of the precious stones for native use; every one you meet wears four or five heavy silver rings, and sovereigns are melted down to make gold ornaments.

Rushing away from the screaming crowd of pedlars, I went with some of my Australian friends to stroll upon the ramparts, and enjoy the evening salt breeze. We met several bodies of white-faced Europeans, sauntering like ourselves, and dressed like us in white trousers and loose white jackets and pith hats. What we looked like I do not know, but they resembled ships' stewards. At last it struck me that they were soldiers, and upon inquiring I found that these washed-out dawdlers represented a British regiment of the line. I was by this time used to see linesmen out of scarlet, having beheld a parade in bushranger-beards, and blue-serge "jumpers" at Taranaki in New Zealand; but one puts up easier with the soldier-bushranger, than with the soldier-steward.

The climate of the day had been exquisite with its bright air and cooling breeze, and I had begun to think that those who knew Acapulco and Echuca could afford to laugh at the East, with its thermometer at 88°. The reckoning came at night, however, for by dark all the breeze was gone, and the thermometer, instead of falling, had risen to 90° when I lay down to moan and wait for dawn. As I was dropping off to sleep at about four o'clock, a native came round and closed the doors, to shut out the dangerous land-breeze that springs up at that hour. Again, at half-past five, it was cooler, and I had begun