A poor, miserable wretch I was upon my arrival at this elevated
station, suffering not only from the fever itself, but from the
feeling of an exquisite debility that creates an utter
hopelessness of the renewal of strength.
I was only a fortnight at Newera Ellia. The rest-house or inn
was the perfection of everything that was dirty and
uncomfortable. The toughest possible specimen of a beef-steak,
black bread and potatoes were the choicest and only viands
obtainable for an invalid. 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.
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