In July 1816, former British Navy officer John Whitworth Bennett arrived in Ceylon with the prospect of employment in the Civil Service. His career in the colony was no great success, however, for he fell out with his superiors, even with Governor Sir Edward Barnes, against whom he brought charges of corruption and misuse of government funds. Eleven years later, Bennett left the island for good, taking with him a storehouse of knowledge that saw expression in several invaluable books published after his return to England. One of them was Ceylon And Its Capabilities: An Account Of Its Natural Resources, Indigenous Productions, And Commercial Facilities (1843). This volume contained travel description and advice, in particular 'maxims for the tourist's observance' that reveal the concerns of the time, some of them valid even today.
Let us begin with the mosquito, the bane of every tourist throughout the centuries. Bennett suggests an ingenious method of erecting a mosquito net that avoided the need for what became known as the 'mosquito dose':
An umbrella should be carried, whenever practicable, during the heat of the day; and I have found a circular curtain of green mosquito net, about 12 feet in depth, with a central ferrule fitted to the curtain, so as to admit the point of the umbrella, a most excellent defence against that inveterate enemy of the new-comer, and constant annoyance to European travellers, the mosquito; for when the umbrella is expanded, and the handle tied to the head of a common rest-house bed, or couch, one may anticipate a night of comparative comfort, without having recourse to a mosquito dose [a dose of alcohol, usually wine!] as a soporific.
As for the conveyance best suited for travel within the island, Bennett's advice is to abandon swift but location-inflexible horse-drawn conveyances, and instead climb aboard a more location-interactive, bearer-borne box. It is much the same as today's advantage of taking a trishaw rather than a bus, although without the burden of knowing you are the literal burden on a squad of men: 'To be perfectly at one's ease, to stop when one pleases, to view the country, or to collect specimens in natural history, there is nothing like the old-fashioned way, by palankin [palanquin].'