Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1894-04-26

ShlII, Haruly can De Surpa SSed by any
thing the world shows, The view, as
one skirts the TANKS of the mountains.
and looks down into an enormous
gorge, its sides clad with the most
! varied and luxuriant foliage. and its
streams, winding among the trees and
level bottom lands below, transformed
cascades and lakes of the exsuis-
ltely delicate green of the young rice.
Once arrived in Handy. one finds him.
self by the shore of a charming little
lake. its banks uncovered in wide
branching tamarind trees and royal
palms. and, above. diversified by the
vine-clad bungalows of the European
tea-planteTs. Close at hand is the
picturesque little Malagawa Buddhist
temple, the most sacred shrine on earth
of Buddhism: for there is preserved
for venerauon an actual tooth of
Buddha, which, though once sacri-
HSiouSly stolen by the Portuguese. and
carried to Goa in India, and there
solemnly burned 70 lime in the pres
ence Of 4 great concourse of ecclesias-
tics, still offers its merits for the wor-
ship of the faithful. As the tooth is
two inches and half long and one
inch and a quarter broad, skeptfcs
have doubted its authenticity. Their
cavilS. however, have left me unn0ved.
Already had l seen, in two widely
separate places, footprints of Buddha
IN granite, six feet, at least, in length.
so that, far from finding anything dis
nv Nn1.tin 70 III
it rather served as a new confirmation
of my wavering faith in the foot
prints. Of far greater Importance.
however, is the fact that in this
temple are preserved the ancient Pail
texts, which bring the student of to-
day into the, nearest contact with
original Buddhism that can now be
had.
A pleasant drives distance from
Handy lie the famous Peradeniya
botanical gardens. They contain, as
an instance, $50 varieties of palms,
with everything else on the same mag
nificent scale. Why make a futile at
tempt to describe the sights they re-
veal and the joy of wandering in
~ VI IL Clulllp Ol
bambo 100 feet in hight and $50
feet in circumference surmounted by
a world of feathery ostrich plumes is
a piece of barren statistics. The sight
of it is marvel forever. Enough that
the traveller from the far south is en-
raptured with the single sense. BE
hold new heavens and a new earthr'
oil ic Of 10
shall come up the mango trees, and
instead of the oak the rubber tree.
Poor, sad-hearted Leasing, weary of
the monOtOny of the same ever-re-
curing spring, one day broke out, ooh
that for once, instead of the same
eternal green, it would come out at
tired in red or orange or purplev
Had he but gone to Ceylon he would
have found the blessed relief he
craved. An absolutely new fora seems
to imply an absolutely new LIE in
man. The caterpillar in his nature
changes into a silkwOrn, the homely
robin into a bird OF paradise. Adam
and Eve combined, and in their first
fresh honeymoon in Eden, could not
have felt more supremely happy than
/ in wandering round and pOcketing
poetic nutmegs and cloves instead of
prOsaic hickory nuts and filberts, in
chewing a twig of spicy cinnamon in
stead of a twig of ordinary sweet
birch,-ay, and in going up to a Gin
chona tree and slicing off a bit of the
bark, and taking my quinine au
natural instead of seeking out a duly
licensed apothecary shop and buying
a dozen highly slblimated pills of the
same extraction. The fall Of Adam
was condoned and blotted out. I was
restored to paradise.