File:Coconut groves and village by the river, view near Point de Galle (Ceylon). Between December 1803 and January 1804 British Library WD1301.jpg

English: Plate 8. "Coconut groves and village by the river: view near Point de Galle (Ceylon). Between December 1803 and January 1804" made for 'Twenty Four Views in St. Helena, the Cape, India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt'. Wash drawing, by Henry Salt (1780-1827), of coconut groves and a village by the river near Point de Galle in Sri Lanka, dated between December 1803 and January 1804. This is the original drawing for 'View near Point de Galle, Ceylon', plate 8, of Henry Salt's 'Twenty Four Views in St. Helena, the Cape, India, Ceylon, the Red Sea, Abyssinia and Egypt'. Point de Galle was inferior only to Trincomalee as a harbour. Salt's view was taken "at the spot where ended a canal ... constructed by the Dutch, for the purpose of bringing down from the forests of the interior, those beautiful woods, which form the chief ornament of the cabinet-work of Europe. The groves of Cocoa-nut trees ... add greatly to the beauty of the scene, and form a roof of foliage impervious to the rays of the sun ... The climate of Pointe de Galle is in general good; Ceylon has not the alternate rainy season, like the coast of Malabar and Coromandel; but being situated between them, is at all time liable to occasional showers which cool the air."