ART. VIII.-Ceylon: An Account of the Island-Physical, Historical, and Topographical; with Notices of its Natural History, Antiquities, and Productions. By Sir JAMES EMERSON TENNENT, K.C.S., LL.D., etc. Illustrated by Maps, Plans, and Drawings. Third Edition. London: Longmans and Co. 1859.

"I AM going Overland," said a friend to us some months ago, when about to start for India, "and will write to you long accounts of Gibraltar, Malta, Égypt, the Red Sea, Aden, and Calcutta." Ceylon had not occurred to him. "We touch," said another, "at Point de Galle, but I suppose there is not much to interest one there." This ignorance of what turns out after all, to be for several reasons, the chief point of interest in the overland route, is almost universal, even among well educated men. It seems strange that it should be so, when works like those of Major Forbes, Dr Davy, Henry Marshall, and Dr Hoffmeister, are easily accessible to all. The able work of Sir James Emerson Tennent will make this ignorance without excuse for the future. But if the traveller to India expects little at Point de Galle, his surprise and pleasure are all the greater when he finds himself amidst scenes from which he had not hoped for a new sensation. "It is now a week," writes one friend, "since we sailed from that charming anchorage-Galle. Our approach to it had been magnificent. The coast, from the time we caught sight of it, was uninterruptedly beautiful. Stretches of bright yellow sand, intervals of rocky beach and low cliffs, with here and there craggy points and reefs running out into the sea, all adorned by a luxuriant forest of cocoa-nut trees and big-leaved plantains, the stems and roots of which are washed by the salt surf, meet the eye. The surf, too, greatly adds to the charms of the scenery. Its bright white masses ever and anon rise up out of the blue expanse, rush up the beach, or over the rocks, or up the cliffs to unaccountable heights, and then from those cliffs rejoining parent ocean in hundreds of white rills and pretty cascades. Nor does the beauty terminate in all this; for beyond the beach, and the groves of which we get a glimpse, and the thickly set native huts which stand out with an occasional smoky plume nodding over them, rise hills and swelling uplands all crowned with dense woods; while yet above all these are lofty mountains, looking grandly as their pointed summits reach towards the sky. In all my Continental wanderings

Travels in Ceylon, etc. Translated from the German. Edinburgh: W. P. Kennedy. 1848.-In the list of works on Ceylon given by Sir J. E. Tennent, Hoffmeister's Travels are not mentioned. It is, however, full of most interesting information.

never had I seen anything so beautiful as this entrance to Point de Galle. The freshness, the luxuriance, the variety of outline in the scenery, the pretty bungalows peeping out from their embosoming groves, the streets with their deeply shaded side-ways, the avenues of great, old trees, the lovely and dazzling flowers of tropical shrubs and creepers, the bustle, animation, and perpetual movement of the Singhalese in their grey-toned garments, all conspire to excite and to interest. Above all, it was the first ushering into the new forms and dazzling specialities of tropical life, vegetable and animal." These were first impressions. But that even a protracted residence on the island, and much familiarity with its scenery do not modify them, is plain from Sir James Tennent's work. The grandeur and beauty of the scenery rise ever freshly before him. Thus, remembering first impressions, and glancing at some general features of the island, he says, "No traveller fresh from Europe will ever part with the impression left by the first gaze upon tropical scenery, as it is developed in the bay, and the wooded hills that encircle it; for although Galle is surpassed both in grandeur and beauty by places afterwards seen in the island, still the feeling of admiration and wonder called forth by its loveliness remains vivid and unimpaired. The sea, blue as sapphire, breaks upon the fortified rocks which form the entrance to the harbour; the headlands are bright with verdure; and the yellow strand is shaded by palm-trees that incline towards the sea, and bend their crowns above the water. The shore is gemmed with flowers; the hills behind are draped with forests of perennial green; and far in the distance rises the zone of purple hills, above which towers the sacred mountain of Adam's Peak, with its summit enveloped in clouds."

But Point de Galle has other attractions besides its scenery. It was the "Kalah" at which the seamen of the renowned Haroun Alraschid "met the Chinese junks, and brought back gems, silks, and spices from Serendib to Bassora ;" and there is every likelihood that it is the long lost Tarshish of Scripture. The reasons for this conclusion are fully stated by the author. The details are interesting, as suggesting to us how much light may yet be shed on Scripture topography. Again, Sir James says, "The nucleus of its mountain masses consists of gneissic, granitic, and other crystalline rocks, which in their resistless upheaval have rent the superincumbent strata, raising them into lofty pyramids and crags, or hurling them in gigantic fragments to the plains below. Time and decay are slow in their assaults on these towering precipices and splintered pinnacles; and from the absence of more perishable materials, there are few graceful sweeps along the higher chains, or rolling downs in the lower

ranges of the hills. Every bold elevation is crowned by battlemented cliffs, and flanked by chasms in which the shattered strata are seen as sharp and as rugged as if they had but recently undergone the grand convulsion that displaced them.

"The soil in these regions is consequently light and unremunerative; but the plentiful moisture arising from the interception of every passing vapour from the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, added to the intense warmth of the atmosphere, combine to force a vegetation so rich and luxuriant, that imagination can picture nothing more wondrous and charming: every level spot is enamelled with verdure; forests of never-fading bloom cover mountain and valley; flowers of the brightest hues grow in profusion over the plains; and delicate climbing plants, rooted in the shelving rocks, hang in huge festoons down the edge of every precipice.

"Unlike the forests of Europe, in which the excess of some peculiar trees imparts a character of monotony and graveness to the outline and colouring, the forests of Ceylon are singularly attractive from the endless variety of their foliage, and the vivid contrast of their hues. The mountains, especially those looking towards the east and south, rise abruptly to prodigious and almost precipitous heights above the level plains; and the emotion excited when a traveller, from one of these towering elevations, looks down for the first time upon the vast expanse of the low lands, leaves an indelible impression on the memory. The rivers wind through the woods below like threads of silver through green embroidery, till they are lost in a dim haze which conceals the far horizon; and through this a line of tremulous light marks where the sunbeams are glittering on the waves upon the distant shore.

"From age to age a scene so lovely has imparted a colouring of romance to the adventures of the seamen who, in the eagerness of commerce, swept round the shores of India, to bring back the pearls and precious stones, the cinnamon and odours of Ceylon. The tales of the Arabians are fraught with the wonders of Serendib;' and the mariners of the Persian Gulf have left a record of their delight in reaching the calm havens of the island, and reposing for months together in valleys where the waters of the sea were overshadowed by woods, and the gardens were blooming in perennial summer."-P. 6.

Again-"In its general outline the island resembles a pear, and suggests to its admiring inhabitants the figure of those pearls which, from their elongated form, are suspended from the tapering end. When originally upheaved above the ocean, its shape was in all probability nearly circular, with a prolongation in the direction of north-east. The mountain zone in the south, covering an area of about 4212 miles, may then have formed the

largest proportion of its entire area; and the belt of low lands, known as the Maritime Provinces, consist to a great extent of soil from the disintegration of the gneiss, detritus from the hills, alluvium carried down the rivers, and marine deposits gradually collected on the shore. But in addition to these, the land has for ages been slowly rising from the sea; and terraces abounding in marine shells, imbedded in agglutinated sand, occur in situations far above high-water mark. Immediately inland from Point de Galle, the surface soil rests on a stratum of decomposing coral; and sea-shells are found at a considerable distance from the shore. Farther north, at Madampe, between Chilau and Megombo, the shells of pearl oysters and other bivalves are turned up by the plough, more than ten miles from the sea.”—P. 12.

The geological features of the island are not of very much interest. On the crests of the mountains, stratified crystalline rocks, with massive veins of quartz, are found distorted and broken by great intruded masses of granite. Gneiss prevails; and as this assumes remarkably eccentric forms, both in position and in the process of disintegration, the surface of the country is everywhere extremely picturesque. Breccias are found along the western coast, formed by the agglutination of corallines, shells, sand, and disintegrated gneiss. Incorporated with these are small sapphires, rubies, tourmaline, etc. In the Northern Provinces a recent coral formation is the prevailing rock. "Nearly four parts of the island," says Sir James, "are undulating plains, slightly diversified by offsets from the mountain system, which entirely covers the remaining fifth. Every district, from the depths of the valleys to the summits of the hills, is clothed with perennial foliage; and even the sand-drifts, to the ripple on the sea-line, are carpeted with verdure, and sheltered from the sunbeams by the cool shadows of the palm groves. But the soil, notwithstanding this wonderful display of spontaneous vegetation, is not responsive to systematic cultivation, and is but imperfectly adapted for maturing a constant succession of seeds and cereal productions. But the chief interest which attaches to the mountains and rocks of this region, arises from the fact that they contain those mines of precious stones which, from time immemorial, have conferred renown on Ceylon. The ancients celebrated the gems as well as the pearls of 'Taprobane;' the tales of mariners, returning from their eastern expeditions, supplied to the story-tellers of the Arabian Nights their fables of the jewels of 'Serendib;' and the travellers of the Middle Ages, on returning to Europe, told of the sapphires, topazes, amethysts, garnets, and other costly stones' of Ceylon, and of the ruby which belonged to the king of the island, a span in length, without a flaw, and brilliant beyond description.'

"The extent to which gems are still found is sufficient to account for these early traditions of their splendour and profusion; and fabulous as this story of the ruby of the Kandyan kings may be, the abundance of gems in Saffragam has given to the capital of the district the name of Ratnapoora, which means literally, 'the city of rubies.' They are not, however, confined to this quarter alone, but quantities are still found on the western plains between Adam's Peak and the sea, at Neuera-ellia, in Oovali, at Kandy, at Mattelle in the Central Province, and at Ruanwelli, near Colombo, at Matura, and in the beds of the rivers eastwards towards the ancient Mahagam."-P. 33.

This glance at the outstanding physical features and mineralogical peculiarities of the island, may form a fitting introduction to a general outline of its civil history. The descriptions in which Camoens, in his great epic, sets before us the regions Where Ceylon lifts her spicy breast,

And waves her woods,

were, at best, but feeble echoes of the gorgeous pictures which, from earliest times, had been given of "the land of the hyacinth and the ruby," "the island of jewels," the "second "Eden." Greek and Roman, Christian and Mahometan, Chinaman and Hindoo, have vied with each other in exalting the praises of Ceylon. Its geographical position, the wildly luxuriant beauty of its scenery, and the rich variety of its fauna and its flora, were sure to attract the attention of nations whose spirit of enterprise was directed either by the lust of conquest or the love of gain. But the island, universally talked of, was till recently little known; less indeed, historically, than India or China. As inquirers searched into the remote past of these wondrous lands, they found, even in their most extravagant myths, restingpoints of historic certainty standing out, at one dimly defined period and another, like objects shrouded in the mists of the morning. But for many generations every attempt to make out the true history of Ceylon was after a season given up as hopeless, because of the deep darkness resting over it. "It was not till about the year 1826 that the discovery was made and communicated to Europe, that whilst the history of India was only to be conjectured from myths, and elaborated from the dates on copper grants, or fading inscriptions on rocks and columns, Ceylon was in possession of continuous written chronicles, rich in authentic facts, and not only presenting a connected history of the island itself, but also yielding valuable materials for elucidating that of India. At the moment when Prinsep was deciphering the mysterious Buddhist inscriptions which are scattered over Hindustan and Western India, and when Cosma de Körrös