Sensation Rock, along Colombo-Kandy Railway

In 1842 English coffee planters in the British colony of Ceylon (now the country of Sri Lanka) demanded a railway be constructed from the hilly region of Kandy to the port city of Colombo for the swift and regular transportation of their produce. The construction of this route through difficult terrain was an engineering feat. Sensation Rock is one of the most striking features of the scenery on the Colombo-Kandy line. There the railway runs under overhanging rocks along the edge of a cliff, with an almost perpendicular fall into the abyss below. Not only was the construction of the railway a technological challenge, but so was the task of photographing it.

The subject of this photograph appears at first glance to be the dramatic landscape. However, the train visible just around the corner also serves as a symbol of the industrial progress brought by the British and the prosperity of their colonial enterprise. The "civilizing" goals of colonialism are celebrated and articulated by Hugh Oakley Arnold-Foster, MP, in his introduction to The Queen's Empire (1897) as: "In every part of the Empire we shall find some trace of the work which Britain is doing throughout the world—the work of civilizing, of governing, of protecting life and property, and of extending the benefits of trade and commerce."