pound them with a huge pestle.

When news of this reached the coast the English determined to intervene
in the interests of humanity. While the horror was yet fresh in the
public mind, a party of native merchants of Colombo came to Kandy to
trade. The fiendish king ordered them seized and horribly mutilated.
When, a few weeks later, the survivors returned to the sea-coast
deprived of ears, noses and hands--with the severed members tied to
their necks--the English decided to act immediately. Three months later
Kandy was in their possession, and the king an exile in southern India.

From that time, with the exception of a few years when the hereditary
Kandyan chiefs were troublesome through finding their privileges
circumscribed, the progress of Ceylon as a whole has been remarkable.
Perhaps the finest example of benefits coming with England's colonial
rule is this "Eden of the Eastern Wave." Slavery and forced labor on
public works have been abolished, fine roads constructed everywhere, and
adequate educational facilities placed within easy reach.

A visitor perceives no squalor, few beggars, and apparently no genuine
poverty. All these advantages have been secured practically without
taxing the natives in any manner. Uniform contentment, consequently, is
everywhere visible. The naked babies, looking like india-rubber dolls,
have apparently never learned to cry.

Oddly enough, the English made Kandy the Saint Helena of Arabi Pasha's
exile, until the broken and aged man was permitted a few years since to
return to his beloved Egypt.

[Illustration: TREES IN PERADENIYA GARDEN, KANDY]

Itself beautiful with poinsettia, bougainvillea, crotons, hibiscus and
palms, a botanical garden in Kandy would seem to have no proper place.
But the city possesses one that is almost unique among tropical gardens.
It is in the suburb of Peradeniya, four miles out, and it is embraced on
three sides by Ceylon's principal stream, the Mahavaliganga. For eighty
years the Ceylon government has treated the Peradeniya garden and its
associated experimental stations as an investment--and it has paid well,
for through its agency the cultivation of cinchona, cacao, rubber and
other economic crops has been introduced to the people. Throughout
Asia the Peradeniya garden is famous. Whether the claim that it is the
finest in the world be correct would require an expert to determine. The
botanical garden at Demerara may be as good, if not larger and b