corundum, Sri Lanka.12, gems

CEYLON, the second Paradise, to which Adam fled after the expulsion, is literally one of the “summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea.” Its softly blue mountains rise up out of the sea and belt themselves round with a broad band of level, green lowlands, where crooked cocoa palms, with trunks aslant at every angle, reel on swollen feet to the very beaches of yellow sand and bend their tufted heads to the voice of the sea, without which, it is said, they cannot live. One always comes into Colombo harbor at daybreak, from whichever quarter the ship sails, and the dawn’s freshness adds to the beauty of the setting and the clearness of every impression. Native catamarans, rude dugout canoes, each with an outrigger log which keeps it level or afloat in any sea or surf, pursue each mail steamer into the protected harbor, and brown boys with their innumerable black and yellow brothers are ready to dive for coins until their cheeks bulge with the accumulated small change of all nations.