ked and entirely lost at various times, in attempting to enter the
harbor of Point de Galle. This is the more surprising because of the
general promptness of the English government in liberally furnishing
all possible marine improvements to her distant colonies.

The town is finely situated, crowning a steep, narrow, and rocky
promontory, on a bay opening to the south. The name Galle means, in
Singhalese, "a rock." The place is facetiously called, on the coast,
the metropolis of false stones and real glass gems. The snug harbor is
bordered by tropical vegetation to the very water's edge, including an
endless number of palms. The town is divided, like Colombo, into
European and native sections; the promontory, jutting southward, is
entirely occupied by the former, and is called the Fort. The
immediate environs of Galle form a natural tropical garden, over which
botanists never fail to grow eloquent, both on account of its variety
and its abundance of floral gems. One striking beauty in this
connection is the marvelous development of the fern family, which is
here seen as a low-growing creeper, and from that size to the
proportions of considerable trees, the feathery fronds varying from
lace-like consistency and size to that of broad and beautiful leaves
of various shades of green. As to orchids, the hothouse climate of
Ceylon develops them in marvelous beauty, both in the jungle and in
the open fields. Nowhere else has the author seen the extensive and
interesting family of ferns in such a state of thrift, except in New
Zealand.

The climate is equable, damp, and hot, thus forming a paradise for
ferns and orchids, which revel in their very opposite styles of
beauty. There are less than twenty degrees variation between the
warmest day and the coldest night of the year at Galle. The rankness
of the vegetation surrounding the town, and also its undrained, swampy
character, render it in some degree objectionable in point of health
to Americans and Europeans, though it is not nearly so much affected
in this respect as Trincomalee, where chills and fever always prevail
more or less among the foreign population.

Extensive and many-colored coral reefs lie at the foot of the rocks
which border the promontory in the harbor of Galle on the south and
west. The natives put this beautiful marine product to a very
unromantic use. Gathering it by the ton, they pile it up on the shore,
mingled with wood and dried seaweed, and burn it