There was literally nothing else; it was a land of starvation.

But the climate! what can I say to describe the wonderful effects of such a pure and unpolluted air?
Simply, that at the expiration of a fortnight, in spite of the tough beef, and the black bread and potatoes, I was as well and as strong as I ever bad been; and in proof of this I started instanter for another shooting excursion in the interior.
It was impossible to have visited Newera Ellia, and to have benefited in such a wonderful manner by the climate, without contemplating with astonishment its poverty-stricken and neglected state.
At that time it was the most miserable place conceivable.

There was a total absence of all ideas of comfort or arrangement.

The houses were for the most part built of such unsubstantial materials as stick and mud plastered over with mortar--pretty enough in exterior, but rotten in ten or twelve years.

The only really good residence was a fine stone building erected by Sir Edward Barnes when governor of Ceylon.
To him alone indeed are we indebted for the existence of a sanitarium.
It was he who opened the road, not only to Newera Ellia, but for thirty-six miles farther on the same line to Badulla.