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entails disappointment and regret upon the hasty emigrant, who may discover, when far from his deserted home, that the paradise which he had pictured to himself is but earthly after all, and is accompanied by drawbacks and hardships which he had not anticipated.

It is not every temperament that is fitted for the anxieties of a wild life in a strange land. This, many persons who have left England confident in their own strength have discovered, unfortunately, when too late.

Englishmen, however, are naturally endowed with a spirit of adventure. There is in the heart of all of us a germ of freedom which longs to break through the barriers that confine us to our own shores; and as the newborn wildfowl takes to water from its deserted egg-shell, so we wander over the world when launched on our own re

sources.

This innate spirit of action is the mainspring of the power of England. Go where you will, from north to south and from east to west, you meet an Englishman. Sail round the globe, and upon every point of strength the Union Jack glad

dens your eye, and you think with wonder of the vast possessions which have been conquered, and the immense tracts of country which have been peopled by the overflow of our little island.

Among the list of possessions, Ceylon is but a speck; nevertheless the act of settling in one colony is a fair sample of the general hardships of emigration. I shall therefore introduce a slight sketch of a settlement in Ceylon, which may give some insight into the little disappointments, inseparable from a new enterprise. The reader will, I trust, wander with me in my rambles through this lovely country, and endeavour to pass an idle hour among the scenes portrayed.

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