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|2.

Map of the Indian Seas.| Colombo is, however, not in the technical sense Indian. It is the chief city of the beautiful island of Ceylon, which is about as large as Ireland. The Governor of Ceylon writes his despatches home not to the Secretary of State for India but to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, for Ceylon is a Crown Colony, not a Province of the Indian Empire. We will, therefore, leave Ceylon to be studied at some other opportunity, and will take the steamer which in a night crosses the Gulf of Manar to Tuticorin, on the Indian coast opposite.

As we lie in our bunks that night, while the ship ploughs the water in the dark, let us realize to what point on the vast surface of the globe we have travelled. A hundred miles away to east of us are the mountains of Ceylon, rising some eight thousand feet above the level of the ocean. A hundred miles to west is Cape Comorin, the southernmost point of India, lying eight degrees north of the Equator. Let us not be deceived by the apparent smallness of space on the maps which we use—those eight degrees are nearly equivalent to the length of Great Britain.