Two happy years in Ceylon

Footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter, and are linked for ease of reference. Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation. Any corrections are indicated using an underline highlight. Placing the cursor over the correction will produce the original text in a small popup. Any corrections are indicated as hyperlinks, which will navigate the reader to the corresponding entry in the corrections table in the note at the end of the text. OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON TWO HAPPY YEARS IN CEYLON. ‘Since Emerson-Tennent’s Monumental Volumes, no description of the country so full, accurate, well-illustrated, or entertaining has been published.’ Daily Chronicle. ‘It will certainly become the classical work on Ceylon.’— Black and White. ‘Miss Gordon Cumming’s is by far the most valuable account of Ceylon that we have read for many years. She has travelled over most of the “Isle of Flowers,” and knows every kind of life, animal and vegetable, that flourishes in that wonderful garden of vivid greenery.... It is thoroughly interesting.’— St. James’s Gazette. ‘It is always pleasant to meet with a new work by Miss Gordon Cumming. Her pages are no less valuable for the information they embody than they are conspicuous for their literary merit. To her keen powers of observation and description she brings the incomparable advantage of a cultured mind and a widely extended knowledge, and she is, in addition, a clever and painstaking artist. A fund of entertainment will be found in this volume. It is bright and pleasant reading, and is pervaded by a sense of thorough enjoyment which fully justifies the title of a clever and very welcome book.’— Spectator. ‘Such a name as the “Ceylonese Encylopædia” would befit it well. Nobody can read a chapter without feeling that he has been learning something he is glad to know, and that he would despair of finding in any other book. The minute peculiarities of the island life, in costume, monuments, house-building and furnishing, festivals, pilgrimages, have never been caught by a more far-seeing eye, or set forth in more apt words. On the whole, this tome will long be a standard work on Ceylon. These points, and many more, to be appreciated must be read as portrayed with feminine grace…