me, it was
transferred to the East India Company. When Captain Francis Light
received it with his dusky bride, it was the wild, uncultivated home of
a few hundred fishermen. To-day it has a population of nearly a hundred
thousand.

CHAPTER IV.

Our course now lies across the Indian Ocean, westward. The rains which
we encounter are like floods, but the air is soft and balmy, and the
deluges are of brief continuance. The nights are serene and bright, so
that it is delightful to lie awake upon the deck of the steamer and
watch the stars now and then screened by the fleecy clouds. In the
daytime it is equally interesting to observe the ocean. Large
sea-turtles come to the surface to sun themselves, stretching their
awkward necks to get a sight of our hull; dolphins and flying-fish are
too abundant to be a curiosity; big water-snakes raise their slimy heads
a couple of feet above the sea; the tiny nautilus floats in myriads upon
the undulating waves, and at times the ship is surrounded by a shoal of
the indolent jelly-fish. Mirage plays us strange tricks in the way of
optical delusion in these regions. We seem to be approaching land which
we never reach, but which at the moment when we should fairly make it,
fades into thin air.

Though the ocean covers more than three-quarters of the globe, but few
of us realize that it represents more of life than does the land. We are
indebted to it for every drop of water distributed over our hills,
plains, and valleys; for from the ocean it has arisen by evaporation to
return again through myriads of channels. It is really a misnomer to
speak of the sea as a desert waste; it is teeming with inexhaustible
animal and vegetable life. A German scientist has with unwearied
industry secured and classified over nine hundred species of fishes from
this division of the Indian Ocean over which our course takes us. Many
of these are characterized by colors as dazzling and various as those of
gaudy-plumed tropical birds and flowers.

Our next objective point is Colombo, the capital of Ceylon, situated
about thirteen hundred miles from the mouth of the Malacca Straits. Here
we find several large steamships in the harbor, stopping briefly on
their way to or from China, India, or Australia; and no sooner do we
come to anchor than we are surrounded by the canoes of the natives. They
are of very peculiar construction, being designed to enable the
occupants to venture out, however rough the