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WELL, I do really think this is Paradise, and I quite believe the story that the Garden of Eden was in Ceylon!”

The “Suez” had arrived at Point de Galle early that morning, and now Alice Lauder was looking up at the stately architectural foliage of a great breadfruit-tree that scattered the tropical sunset from its green bulk in quivering fragments of gold. She sat on the grass in a happy, but unceremonious position, hugging her knees with both hands, and gazing about with a child’s ecstasy at the novel landscape. The first plunge into tropical scenery gives everyone a delightful shock; and to Alice’s Australian eyes, accustomed to the yellow-grey glare of her native plains, to the thin bleached grass and transparent foliage of the woodlands, this sudden vision of tropical beauty was almost overpowering. To the right were the old white ramparts built by the Dutch 300 years ago, the spray