were, and still are, realized for
them. The edible nests are held to be the choicest dish to place
before the emperor. The best and most glutinous product of this
species of bird comes from Java, Borneo, and Sumatra, and the shores
of Malacca Straits, generally. Caltura is also famous for the
manufacture of fancy baskets of various shapes, made from palm leaf,
rice straw, and lemon grass. They are put up in nests of a dozen in a
package, one within another. These baskets find many purchasers among
those who come to the island, who are glad to carry away a souvenir of
their visit. Here the traveler will see that rare and favorite fruit,
the mangosteen, flourishing, and, so far as we could learn, it is one
of the few districts in Ceylon where it is to be found.

On returning from Adam's Peak, visitors often descend the Kaluganga in
boats to Caltura. The distance from the coast to the summit of the
mountain is about sixty-five miles. The country through which the
river passes is by no means thickly populated, but intersects some
native villages and towns, such as Hanwella and Avissawella, together
with numberless rice plantations and thrifty cocoanut groves.

This river, like nearly all in Ceylon, is more or less infested by
alligators. Like the tortoise and the turtle, they deposit eggs in the
sandy banks of the stream, where they can mature by the heat of the
sun. A certain species of the monkey tribe is very partial to new-laid
alligator eggs, and is on the watch much of the time to discover the
mother when she deposits them. After she has ingeniously covered them
and returned to her native element, the monkey feasts royally upon the
eggs, and he knows where to come again on the following day for a
renewal of the feast. As the alligators are not often disturbed by man
on this island, were Nature not to place some check upon their
breeding habits, they would soon overrun it. The Ceylon leopard, as it
is called, feeds upon the monkey, so that _his_ tribe may not become
too numerous.

The natives, who are believers in the doctrine of metempsychosis,
often express the wish that their post-mortem fate may be to reappear
in the shape of monkeys, because, in this land of perpetual summer,
the wild, free wood-life of that creature seems to them so delightful.
The tribe is a large one, and exhibits a great variety in Ceylon, from
tiny objects like dolls to gigantic fellows which would give Du
Chaillu's gorillas odds, and beat