Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey].

  • De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859.
Date:
1863
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Coleridge and opium-eating, and other writings / [Thomas De Quincey]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CEYLON. cold, obviously he faucied it requisite to travel north- wards ; to taste of polar power, he supposed it indispens- able to have advanced towards the pole. Narrow was the knowledge in those days, when a master in Israel might have leave to err thus grossly. Whereas at present, few are the people amongst those not openly making profes- sion of illiteracy, who do not know that a sultan of the tropics—ay, though his throne were screwed down by exquisite geometry to the very centre of the equator— might as surely become familiar with winter by ascending three miles in altitude, as by travelling three thousand horizontally. In that way of ascent it is that Ceylon has her regions of winter and her Arctic districts. She has her Alps, and she has her alpine tracts for supporting human life and useful vegetation. Adam’s Peak, which of itself is more than seven thousand feet high (and by repute the highest range within her shores), has been found to rank only fifth in the mountain scale. The highest is a thousand feet higher. The maritime district, which runs round the island for a course of nine hundred miles, fanned by the sea-breezes, makes, with these vary- ing elevations, a vast cycle of secondary combinations for altering the temperature and for adapting the weather. The central region has a separate climate of its own. And an inner belt of country, neither central nor mari- time, which from the sea-belt is regarded as inland, but from the centre is regarded as maritime, composes another chamber of climates; whilst these again, each individually within its class, are modified into minor varieties by local circumstances as to wind, by local accidents of position, and by shifting stages of altitude. With all this compass of power, however (obtained from its hills and its varying scale of hills), Ceylon Las