CHAPTER XV

IN THE LAND OF THE WANDERING PRINCE

The scenery that met my gaze as I moved through the streets of Colombo seemed much like that of some great painting. The golden sunshine, the rich green, the dark bodies moving here and there among figures clad in snowy white, were more colorful than I had ever imagined. At noonday the fiery sun beat down on me so unmercifully that I sought shelter in a neighboring park. There I dreamed away my first day’s freedom from the holy-stone. A native runner awoke me toward nightfall, and thrust into my hands a card. On it was printed an advertisement of a “Sailors’ Boarding House of Colombo, Proprietor Almeida.” I found it easily. It was a two-story building, with stone floor, but otherwise of the lightest wooden material. The dining-room, in the center of the building, had no roof. Narrow, windowless rooms in the second story faced this open space. These housed the sailors who stayed there.

Almeida, who kept the boarding-house, was a Singhalese who belonged to a higher class or caste than certain other natives of Ceylon. In proof of this he wore tiny pearl earrings and a huge circle comb. His hair was gray, and being thin did not hold the comb in position very long at a time. It dropped on the floor behind him so often that he had a little brown boy follow him about all day with nothing else to do but to pick it up for him. Almeida wore a white silk jacket decorated with red braid and glistening brass buttons, and a skirt of the gayest plaid. His feet were bare, and his toes spread out so that they pointed in five different directions.

I signed a note promising to pay for my room and board after I had earned the money, and was made a guest in the Sailors’ Boarding House. Four white men and as many black leaned their elbows on the board used for a table, and waited for the evening meal. In a cave near by, two brown men were sitting on their heels, stirring something in a kettle over a fire of sticks. After a time they ceased stirring, and began chattering like monkeys in high, squeaky voices. Suddenly they became silent, dashed through the smoke in the cave, and dragged the steaming kettle forth into the dining-room. One of them scooped out the steaming rice and filled our plates. The younger ran back into the smoky cave and snatched up a smaller pot containing chopped fish. Besides this, we had bananas and drinking water that was saltish, discolored, and lukewarm.

The cooks gave us each a tin spoon, then filled a battered basin with rice, and, squatting on their heels, began eating their own supper with their fingers. The wick that floated in a bottle of oil lighted up only one corner of the table, and the rising moon, falling upon the naked figures, cast strange shadows across the uneven floor.

I laid my head on a hand to show that I was getting sleepy, and one of the cooks led the way to the second story and into one of the narrow rooms. It was furnished with three low wooden tables having queerly curved legs. I asked for my bed. But the cook spoke no English, and I sat down and waited for my room-mates.

A long hour afterward two white men stumbled up the stairs. The first carried a candle high above his head. He was lean, gray-haired, and clean-shaven. The other man was a heavy, yellow-haired Swede.

“Oho! Ole,” grinned the older man, “here’s a new bunkie. Why don’t you turn in, mate?”

“I haven’t found my bed yet,” I answered.

“Your bed!” cried the newcomer. “Why, you’re sitting on it.”

I followed the example of the others—undressed and put on a thin garment that I found hanging over my “bed.” Then, using my bundle of clothing for a pillow, I lay down upon the table and sweated out the night.

Over the tea, bananas, and cakes of ground cocoanut that we had for breakfast, we told each other how we happened to be in that part of the world. The Swede was merely a sailor. But the older man was an Irishman named John Askins, once a professor in the Dublin University, who had been obliged to give up his work because of poor health.

Before many days had passed I had found work. An Englishman had advertised for a carpenter, and for three days following I superintended the labors of a band of coolies in laying a hardwood floor in his bungalow.

After the work was finished I set off early one morning for a trip into the interior of the island. At about noon I reached the open country. Tropical plant life ran wild over all the land. In the black shadows swarmed naked human beings. But the highway was wide, as well built as those in Europe, and closely bordered on both sides by thick forests of towering palm trees. Here and there bands of coolies repaired the roadway or fought back the war-like vegetation with ax-like knives.

Clumsy, heavy-wheeled carts, covered like a gypsy wagon, creaked slowly by behind humped oxen. At first sight the roof seemed made of canvas, but as the vehicle came nearer I saw that it was made of thousands of leaves sewn together. Under it the scrawny driver grinned cheerily and mumbled some strange words of greeting. The glare of sunshine was dazzling; a wrist uncovered for a moment was burned as red as if it had been branded, and my face shone browner in the mirror of each passing stream.

In the forest there were the slim bamboo, the broad-leafed banana tree, and most of all the cocoanut-palm. Natives armed with heavy knives clasped the trees like monkeys and walked up the slender trunks. Then, hiding themselves in the bunch of leaves sixty feet above, they chopped off the nuts, which struck the soft spongy earth and rebounded high into the air. All through the forest sounded this dull, muffled thump, thump, thump of falling cocoanuts.

In the middle of the afternoon, as I lay resting on a grassy slope under shady palms, I heard a crackling of twigs; and, turning around, I met a pair of eyes peering wonderingly at me. I nodded encouragingly. A native, dressed in a ribbon and a tangle of oily hair, stepped from behind a great drooping banana leaf and came slowly and timidly toward me. Behind him tiptoed about twenty naked men and boys. They moved toward me smilingly like stage dancers, but pausing often to make signs meant to encourage one another. How different was their behavior from that of the quarrelsome Arab! It seemed as if a harsh word or cross look on my part would send these simple countrymen scampering away through the forest. A white man is a tin god in Ceylon.

When they saw that I was not ill-natured, the natives gurgled some words of greeting and squatted in a half-circle at the foot of the slope on which I lay. We chatted in the language of signs. They seemed to be interested in my pipe. When it had burned out I turned it over to the leader. He passed it on to his companions. To my horror, they began testing the strange thing by thrusting the stem half way down their throats and sucking fiercely at it. After that they fell to examining the articles in my knapsack. When I took my camera from them, they begged me with tears in their eyes to allow them to open it. To turn their attention from it I began inquiring about their tools and betel-nut pouches. They offered to give me every article that I asked to see; and then sneaked round behind me to carry off the gift while I was examining another.

I rose to continue my way, but the natives burst out begging me to stay, and, sending three boys on some unknown errand, squatted about me again and fell to preparing new chews of betel-nuts. The boys soon returned, one carrying a jack-fruit, another a bunch of bananas, and the third swinging three green cocoanuts by their rope-like stems. The leader laid the gifts, one after another, at my feet. Two men with jungle knives sprang forward, and, while one hacked at the hard jack-fruit, the other caught up a cocoanut, chopped off the top with one stroke, and invited me to drink. The milk was cool and refreshing, but the meat of the green nut was as tough as a leather strap. The jack-fruit, which looked much like a watermelon, was at last split into long slices. These in turn split sidewise into dozens of parts like those of an orange. The meat itself was white and rather tasteless. The bananas were small, but delicious. When I had sampled each of the gifts, I distributed them among the givers and turned down to the highway.

Night had no terrors for me in Ceylon. When it grew too dark for tramping, I had only to lie down on the grass under my feet, sleep peacefully in the warm breeze that blew over me, and rise refreshed with the new dawn.

I was twenty miles from the city when I rose from my first forest lodging and set out on my second day’s tramp before the country people were astir. Now and then the road left the encircling palm trees and crossed a small rolling plain. I came upon little villages with every mile—rambling two-row hamlets of bamboo. Between them lonely cottages with roofs made of grasses and reeds peeped from beneath the trees.

As the sun climbed higher, grinning groups of countrymen pattered by. Half the houses along the way offered the fruits of the forest and tea and cocoanut cakes for sale. Before every hut, however wretched, stood an earthenware vessel of water, beside which hung, for use as a drinking-vessel, the half of a cocoanut-shell. So I did not have to go hungry or thirsty long at a time.

Bathing seemed to be the national sport of Ceylon. Every stream I passed was alive with splashing natives. Mothers, walking from one village to another, halted at every stream to roll a banana leaf into a cone-shaped bucket and pour gallons of water on their sputtering babies, crouched naked on the bank. Travelers on foot or by oxcart took a dip every hour or so along the way. The farmer left his plowing often to plunge into the nearest water-hole. His wife, instead of calling on her neighbors, met them at the brook, and gossiped with them as she splashed about in cool and comfort. The men, wearing only a loin-cloth, paid no attention to their clothing. The women, wound from their knees to their arms in sheets of snowy white, came out of the water, and after turning themselves round and round in the blazing sunshine, marched home in dry garments.

On the third day I came to foot-hills covered with tea plantations. Beyond these hills the highway climbed up some low mountains. At the top I paused at a little wayside shop built of rubbish picked up in the forest. A board, stretched like a counter across the open doorway, was heavily laden with bananas. Near at hand a brown woman was spreading out grain with her feet. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to ask my friends at the Sailors’ Boarding House the Singhalese words for “How much?” I pointed at the fruit and tossed on the counter a coin. It was a copper piece worth one and three fourths cents—enough surely, to pay for half a dozen bananas, I thought. The woman carefully picked up the coin, and, turning it over and over in her hand, stared at me with wide-open eyes. Had I been stingy? I was thrusting my hand into my pocket for another copper, when the woman motioned to me to open my knapsack. Then she dropped into it three dozen bananas, paused a moment thoughtfully, and added another bunch.

A short distance beyond, I sat down in the shade and began eating the fruit in order to lighten my burden. An old man, blacker than anybody I had met that day, came wandering past. A strip of cloth covered with red and yellow stripes was wrapped round his waist and fell to his knees. Over his head was folded a sheet of orange color. In each hand he carried a bundle tied with green vines. The upper part of his face looked shy. The lower half was totally covered with a heavy tangled beard deeply streaked with gray.

He limped painfully to the roadside, and squatted on his heels at the edge of the shade. Plainly, he too was “on the road.”

“Have a bite?” I invited, pushing the fruit toward him.

A child’s voice squeaked within him. Gravely he rose to his feet and began bowing, expressing his thankfulness in every motion possible except that of standing on his head. This over, he fell to eating with both hands so willingly that, with never a pause or a choke, he made away with twenty-eight bananas. Small wonder he slept awhile in the edge of the shade before going on.

I rose to plod on, and he would not be left behind—far behind, that is. I could not induce him to walk beside me; he pattered always two paces in the rear. From the motions and signs he made in answer to my questions, I learned that he was journeying to some place of worship in the mountains. Two hours beyond our meeting-place, he halted at a branch road, knelt in the highway, and, before I knew what he was going to do, pressed a loud kiss on the top of one of my Nazarene slippers. Only a quick movement on my part saved the other from the same fate. He stood up slowly, almost sadly, as if he were grieved to part from good company,—or bananas,—shook the dust of the road out of his beard, and, turning into the forest-choked path, was gone.

Night falling over the mountains overtook me just as I came near a thatched roof at the roadside. The owner took no pay for my lodging, and the far-off howling of dogs lulled me to sleep.

With dawn I was off once more. Sunrise waved greetings over the leafy trees as I entered the ancient city of Kandy.

Hundreds of years ago this mountain city was the seat of the native king. To-day the ruler of Ceylon is a bluff Englishman who lives in a stone mansion within sight of the harbor of Colombo. Nevertheless, a descendant of the native king still lives in the capital of his forefathers. But his duties have narrowed down to that of keeping alive the religion of Gautama, the Buddha, or the wandering prince.

This prince lived more than twenty-four hundred years ago. He taught that if men are not very good indeed while living, after death they will have to live again and again in the shape of some animal, and later of some human being, until they at last learn to be pure. For thousands of years the natives of Ceylon and India have followed his teaching. That explains why they worship animals, and why there are so many classes or castes of people in India.

Although Buddha did not consider himself holy, his followers have built temples in his honor and worshiped him since his death. Hundreds of years ago, it is said, there was found in Burma one of the teeth of this prince. This was sent a long distance to the egg-shaped island of Ceylon, and over it was built the famous “Temple of the Tooth.” It was this temple that I had come to visit, although I was not sure that I should be allowed to enter.

The keeper of the inn where I stopped had two sons who spoke English. The older was a youth of fifteen. We became friends at once.

“Have you, I wonder, visited our Temple of the Tooth?” he asked.

“Outside,” I answered. “Are sahibs allowed to enter?”

“Surely!” cried the youth. “We are joyed to have white men visit our temples. To-night we are having a service very important in the Temple of the Tooth. With my uncle, who keeps the cloth-shop across the way, I shall go. Will you not forget your religion and honor us by coming?”

“With pleasure,” I answered.

Two flaring torches threw fantastic shadows over the chattering crowd of natives that lifted us bodily up the broad stairway to the outer temple. At the top of the stairs surged a noisy multitude, each and every one of them carrying a candle, a bit of cardboard, or the lotus-flower, to lay in the lap of his favorite statue. From every nook and corner, the image of the wandering prince looked on with sadness.

Of all the crowd I alone was shod. I dropped my slippers at the landing, and, half expecting a stern command to remove my socks, walked into the brighter light of the interior.

A whisper arose beside me, and swelled louder as it passed quickly from mouth to mouth: “Sahib! sahib!” I had dreaded lest my coming should cause them to turn angrily upon me; but Buddha himself, arriving thus unexpectedly, could not have won more boisterous welcome. The worshipers swept down upon me, shrieking gladly. Several thrust into my hands the blossoms they had meant for Buddha. One pressed upon me a badly rolled cigar of native make. From every side came candles and matches.

At the tinkle of a far-off bell the natives fell back, leaving a lane for our passing. Two priests in yellow robes, smiling and bowing low at every step, advanced to meet me, and led the way to a balcony overlooking the lake.

In the dim light of a corner, three natives in scanty breech-clouts and great turbans squatted before what appeared to be large baskets. I remained near them with the priests, and waited for “the service very important.”

Suddenly the three in the corner, each grasping two weapons that looked like clubs, stretched their hands high above their heads and brought them down with a crash that made me jump to my feet. What I had taken for baskets were tom-toms! Without losing a single beat, the drummers began to blow vigorously on long pipes from which came a sad wailing. I spoke no more with my guide, for the “musicians” made noise that drowned all other sounds for the next two hours.

I marched on with the monks, who had given me a place of honor in their ranks, from one statue to another. Behind us surged a murmuring multitude who fell on their knees again and again. No one sat during the service, and there was nothing like a sermon. The priests spoke only to the dreamy-eyed Buddhas.

It was late when the service ended. The boiler-factory music ceased as suddenly as it had begun, the worshipers poured forth into the soft night, and I was left alone with my guides and a dozen priests.

“See,” whispered the innkeeper’s son. “You are honored. The head man of the temple comes.”

An aged father drew near slowly. In outward appearance he looked exactly like the other priests. A brilliant yellow robe was his only garment. His head was shaved; his arms, right shoulder, and feet were bare. Having joined the group, he studied me a moment in silence, then said something to me in his native language.

“He is asking if you are liking to see the sacred tooth?” translated my guide.

I bowed my thanks. The high priest led the way to the innermost room of the temple. In the center of this room he halted, fell on his knees, and, muttering a prayer, touched his forehead to the stone floor three times. The attendant priests imitated every movement he made.

He then rose and drew forth a large gold casket. From it he took a second a bit smaller, and handed the first to one of his companions. From the second he drew a third, and from the third a fourth. This was kept up until nearly every priest held a casket, some fantastically carved, some inlaid with precious stones. With the opening of every third box, all those not holding anything fell on their knees and repeated their prayers and bowings. Finally the head priest came to the innermost casket, not over an inch in length and set with diamonds and rubies. At sight of this all fell on their knees and murmured prayers. Then the head priest opened it carefully. Inside, yellow with age, was a tooth that certainly never grew in any human mouth. The fitting together of the box of boxes required as much ceremony as was necessary in taking them apart.