Looking back on Point de Galle

S. Pathiravitana

When I tell my friends that my first job was as a trainee attached to the Range Forest office in Galle, they ask me at once, 'But, there are no forests in Galle, are there?' 'Good question,' I tell them, and go on to explain that Galle has practically everything except palmyrah.

That's true, Galle produces a good part of our major exports like tea, rubber and coconut and citronella oil. The tea estates, for instance, begin at Walahanduva - just about five miles from the sea! It also trains youths in the management of tea estates.

The forests start from Kottowa, not to be confused with Kottawa which is virtually in Colombo. This Kottowa forest starts from a little beyond Walahanduva. It spreads over an area of 10,000 acres and crosses over to the other forest area known as Kombola. On one side of the Kottowa-Kombola forest range runs the road to Hiniduma and on the other is the road to hilly Deniyaya.

Now that we have got in order the geography of the places we are talking about, let us enter the forests. For a city bird like me visiting the forests for the first time was like entering a solemn cathedral.

Tall, stately trees all round, trying to reach up to the heavens and man, weak man crawling on the ground below like an ant. Fortunately, this forest range has no fierce animals and there is no need therefore to carry a gun.

At the time I was there, over 50 years ago, there used to be a picnicking spot in the Kottowa forest close to the main road where those living in the town of Galle could come to experience briefly the spirit of place. I wonder whether this picnicking spot caught on and functions still.

My sweetest memory of the Kottowa forest, however, is about a strange fruit I encountered there. The Forest Guard who accompanied me on this tour asked me whether I have eaten mee amba.

I had heard of this fruit but never seen it before. I imagined it to be a fruit as large as a karthacolombum, but to my surprise and disappointment it turned out to be a tiny fruit hardly bigger than a berry. No knife was needed for that job. All that you had to do was to pop it into your mouth like a ju-jube, suck in the juice and spit out the tiny seed. No mango, I must say, had tasted up to that time ever so sweeter than this pip.

Returning to the town of Galle where I resided, the other site that attracted me was the landmark of this town - its Fort. For a historical site it had a rather neglected look at that time.

As they say it in Sinhala, even the red coxcomb of a rooster begins, after a time, to appear white. However, for an outsider like me, not only is this lonely sentinel now standing guard in a lovely place, with a harbour on one side and the open sea on the other, but it also beckons you to explore its past.

Had the passage through the Suez Canal never been opened, Galle may have become the commercial, if not the administrative capital of this country. America, for instance, installed its first Commercial Counsellor to Ceylon in Galle.

Until the end of the 19th century most of the visitors to this country coming from the West, disembarked at the port known as Point de Galle, for that was how Galle was known to the world up to the end of the 19th century. According to Henry Heusken, an American who was on his way to join the newly opened US embassy in Japan as its First Secretary, this is how the name Point de Galle originated.

"About three hundred and sixty years ago, the intrepid Vasco da Gama, with a handful of men, went ashore in the long boat when he saw the smooth beach of this Spice Island.

Setting foot on ground he heard the familiar crowing sound of a great many roosters and for that reason he called it Punto di Galle, meaning Roosters' Point." (To interrupt this narrator for a moment, it is possible that Vasco da Gama actually said Punto di Galo because a 'rooster,' in his language, Portuguese, was a Galo, which later turned into Galle. But let's let him go on.) "This handful of heroes immediately started working and built a fortress whose solid wall has resisted so far the ravages of time.

For one hundred and fifty years the glorious descendants of Albuquerque and Vasco da Gama knew how to maintain their positions on the 'Pearl of the Indies,' but another sun was rising on the seas of the Indies before which all others were going to wane."

This, of course, was Britain who took over not only Vasco da Gama's Punto di Galle but also the entire country and changed the Punto into Point and later dropped the Point altogether leaving Galle naked.

I wonder how this story narrated by Heusken would go down with the Dutch. All along we have been told by our historians that it is the Dutch who built this fort in Galle.

Heusken, though an American citizen, is Dutch by descent and unlikely to let the country of his birth down. And now the Dutch Government has taken charge of preserving their handiwork, they may not have touched it if the Portuguese had a hand in it.

There is a picture, both in paint and in print, by Wolffgang Heydt, a German artist who worked for the Dutch government, of how the Fort functioned in the 18th century. It was big enough, he says, to accommodate about 4 to 5 thousand soldiers, but only about a 1000 would have been needed in an actual battle, because the natural formation of the place favoured the defenders.

There were quite a few people of different persuasions and faith living inside the Fort. Let Heydt describe this in his own words in his book called Ceylon: "It ( the Fort) is built over with many but very poor houses in which the Europeans are the least seen, but in it dwell Costizos and Mestizos, Moors, Malabars, Sinhalese and Chetties mostly mixed together" and presumably in great harmony. Costizos is not in the Shorter Oxford but Mestizos is there. and means offspring of 'Spanish and American Indian.'

Here it would be offspring of Dutch and any other people from the above mentioned communal group.

And in the same breath Heydt goes on to say, "These (Europeans) who have decided to remain here find everything fully according to their desires in this place, for the private soldier can manage very well on his ration - and travelling allowance, as also the good monthly pay which he draws three times a year; and with that keep also a black maid servant who serves him instead of a wife, and in addition enjoy a table such as no craftsman in Europe could ask for better, seeing that fowls, eggs, pork, beef, fish and such eatables are to be had there for a low price."

Point de Galle was a memorable experience for most visitors to this country. As the ship enters the harbour, what is laid before the travellers is a colourful picture-post card.

The blue waters of the bay and its white beaches with row upon row of waving palms fading into the bluish hills in the background and overtopped by a remarkably attractive conically shaped peak held sacred by people of all faiths as either Adam's Peak or Samanala Kanda.

Among the visitors to this country in the 19th century was Andrew Carnegie, the man who laid the foundation for America's supremacy in steel production. A self made man who succeeded in becoming a multi millionaire and a great philanthropist as well. His visit to Ceylon was made memorable for him, he says, when he rode in a coach from Galle to Colombo.

"Future travellers," he has said, "will soon miss one of the rarest treats in Ceylon. The railway will soon be completed from Colombo to Galle and the days for coaching will cease for ever. We congratulate ourselves that our visit was before this passed away, as we know no drive equal to that we have now enjoyed twice, and the last time even more than the first."

A most well-informed man, Carnegie knew more about Ceylon than most of us. He admired the Gam Sabha system of rural government that existed once. deplored its destruction by the British at the start of their rule and praised its restoration by the same people around 1871.

A subject he knew even better was of the high quality of iron ore which exists, he said, in large quantities in this country with a quality that rivals the Swedish product.

Some day when transport becomes cheaper, Britain, he said "may import this unrivalled stone." He also said of local iron that "it has been worked from remote times and that the native articles of iron are preferred even today to any that can be imported." Whatever happened to the Hardware Corporation we started?