Point Pedro is a small town, and the harbor does not deserve the name, being only an open roadstead sheltered by a coral reef, where a number of vessels of moderate size are nearly always to be seen. Its commerce is limited to the export of tobacco, cocoanut oil, and cabinet woods. The trade is almost entirely with continental India, from whence rice is largely imported. Some cattle, sheep, and elephants are also shipped from here to southern India, the government realizing a royalty upon each of the last-named animals exported.
Jaffna is over two hundred miles from Colombo by land, and is peopled mostly by Tamils, who have a record connected with their settlement here reaching back for many centuries. The population of the entire peninsula is recorded as being about two hundred thousand, to meet whose spiritual wants there are said to be three hundred Hindu temples in this northern province. The peninsula presents one uniform level, and is unbroken by a single hill, scarcely varied, in fact, by an undulation of more than a very few feet. This dead level renders the country unfit for rice culture, as it prevents the advantageous flow of an artificial supply of water. By much labor this difficulty is partially overcome, and considerable rice is grown in various parts of the district, but much more is imported. The best sheep in Ceylon are raised in this part of the island; they have long hair in place of wool, and to the uninitiated seem more like goats than sheep.
The Dutch left the impress of their residence here in the characteristic style of the architecture,--low, substantial, broad-spread stone buildings, which still remain. These homes are detached, and surrounded by garden plots containing thrifty fruit trees and charming flowers, supplemented by graceful creeping and flowering vines upon the dark gray old walls of the dwellings. The streets of the town are wide and regular, shaded by an abundance of handsome tulip-trees. There are at least forty thousand people living in and immediately around Jaffna. It has a certain oriental look, especially in the quarters where the native bazaars are situated, thronged by copper-colored men and women. This region is well wooded, the predominating tree being the palmyra palm.