little woman is told that a sea voyage is
absolutely necessary to save her husband's life.
And therefore there is money to borrow at ten
per cent, and the passage to be paid for, and
the children's sea clothing to be got ready, and
poor Sanguine goes home on half-pay for eighteen
months and then comes out again alone, because
he cannot pay for his wife's passage and that of
his three children (there are three now). So he
spends four or five dreary years at some lonely
place far from his loved ones, and at last,
when his wife rejoins him, the grey hairs are
sprinkled over his head, and furrows have been
traced on her brow, and the children are away at
school in England, and a heavy pull they are; and
Sanguine asks himself sometimes why it is that
his old school-fellow, Tom Hardy, who is in the
Madras Civil Service, and who came out the
same year that he did, should be drawing one
thousand five hundred a year at Negepatam, not
more than a few hours' sail distant on the Indian
coast, while he, poor Sanguine, in the Ceylon
Civil Service, and in a much more expensive
country, should, for doing the same kind of work,
be only receiving seven hundred. In course of
time, when Sanguine's sons and daughters are
grown up and his head is silver white, he is
appointed Controller-General, and draws one
thousand five hundred a year. But he has saved
nothing, for the education of his family has cost
much. Were he to retire, his pension would
be about five hundred a year, and he has still
two daughters and a son unprovided for. If he
die, there is no pension for his wife, and he pays
a heavy premium on the insurance of his life.
Meanwhile, his old friend Tom Hardy, late of
the Madras Civil Service, has been living
comfortably in England for the last ten years on a
pension of one thousand a year, and the
interest of his savings accumulated out of a
princely income.

Is this too gloomy a picture? No doubt I
might have drawn a brighter one; but it is not
a false one. There are some who have avoided
those fata morgana, acting appointments,
accepted with the hope that Fogie who went on
leave will never come out again, and then Smith
who is acting for him will be confirmed, and Jones
will be confirmed in Smith's place, and Brown
in Jones's, and Robinson in Brown's, and so on.
Unfortunately, Fogie always does come out
again, and remains out, in spite of the
prognostications of his well-wishers, who one and all
tell each other, and every one else, that it is the
maddest thing that ever was heard of for him
to come out at his time of life, for he will die
within a twelvemonth, &c. &c. There are some,
too, who are content to remain single, or who
are sent to stations where they have no
opportunity of becoming double, and who save enough
to take them home for a year after six or seven
years' service; when they spend every farthing
they have saved, and probably have to run into
debt to return. There are some who have
even saved a few hundreds, but they are few.
The most a man can reasonably hope for, under
favourable circumstances, is, to live within his
means, educate his children, bring them out,
settle them, assure his life for one thousand
pounds in his wife's favour, and retire at fifty-
seven or eight on six hundred pounds a year,
leaving his children to fight their way on as he
did. If he do this, he does much more than
most of his companions. A day or two ago I
looked into the Civil Service List, and found
that on an average it took a man about seven
years to rise to an appointment worth six
hundred pounds a year. Of the men in receipt of
eight hundred pounds a year confirmed, the
youngest had been eleven years, and the oldest
nineteen years, in the service. Of those drawing
one thousand five hundred pounds a year, the
senior had been forty-one years, and the youngest
in standing, twenty-two years in office. I do
not speak of one or two exceptional cases,
where men have been sent out from England to
take up at once some high appointment.

As to the scientific branches of the service,
the departments of the Surveyor-General and
the Civil Engineer, the emoluments are on a still
less favourable scale, while the work is most
trying to the constitution; it involves daily
exposure to sun and rain, malaria, and fever, and,
excepting the heads of each department, who
draw one thousand two hundred pounds, the
salaries range between seven hundred and fifty
pounds and three hundred pounds. I could
name professional engineers who, after eight
years' residence in the island, are drawing only
three hundred pounds a year fixed salary, and
some house allowance—a salary such as a writer
might look for after eighteen months' service.
When I add that a family man has to pay some
hundred and twenty pounds a year wages for
servants, and that in the large towns his house-
rent will be at least ninety pounds, I fear I
have not drawn a very tempting picture.

I now proceed to say something regarding the
opening that a coffee estate or a merchant's
office affords. With capital, energy, and
connexion, there are few places where a man cannot
get on, and Ceylon is as good a field as any, and
perhaps better than most.

If a young fellow come to Ceylon with the
promise of employment on an estate—and without
some such promise I would dissuade him
from coming at all—he will probably be engaged
at first as an assistant to an experienced
superintendent, at a salary of one hundred
pounds, one hundred and fifty pounds, or two
hundred pounds, a year, with a furnished bungalow
to live in, servants, and the use of a horse,
all free. As his expenses will only be his meat,
and drink, and clothes, this is a very fair
commencement to make, and the danger of running
into debt, which the young civilian at his
outset incurs, the young planter escapes. At
the end of a year or two, if he have established
a character for energy and steadiness, and shown
an aptitude for his pursuit, he will probably be
placed in charge of an estate with, say, three
hundred pounds a year, and the same advantages
as to house, horses, and servants as before;
perhaps with greater advantage in those respects.