Then bending at his hallow'd feet Which plainly indicates a breast With every milder virtue blest!" Returning to Awissawela, it may be noted that the road so named terminates at the Sítáwaka ferry, which forms the link between it and the Yatiyantota road from the north. A short distance below the resthouse is the junction with the Ratnapura road, which trends away in a south-easterly direction. On this road a traction engine has just been placed, to run between Badulla, Haputale, Ratnapura, and Colombo. If successful in its operations, about which there can scarcely exist a doubt, it will be speedily followed *The "ENTERPRIZE," manufactured by Mr. R. W. Thomson, C. E., of Edinburgh; imported by Mr. John Brown, for the Ouvah Coffee Company: landed in Colombo, on the 22nd January, in charge of the engineer Mr. James Westland. This engine is of 6 horse power, but can be worked up to 12, and with a load of 12 tons, in a train of four waggons, will travel on level ground 8 miles an hour, and on the inclines in the interior at from 2 to 4 miles an hour, according to the nature of the gradients. The first trial trip in Ceylon was made at Colombo on the 17th February, 1870. by others elsewhere, and the traffic on the main lines of communication throughout the island will be as completely revolutionized in the course of a few years, as has already been the case with that between Kandy and Colombo, by means of the Railway. The first stage for halting at, after leaving Awissawela, is Puswella. The road undulates along the base of forestclad hills, or through tracts of paddy lands, and presents nothing remarkable, beyond the paintings on the walls of a way-side Ambalama,† which represent, among other things, Buddha striding from the top of Adam's Peak, after indenting there the print of his left foot, to Siam, where he in like manner left the impression of his right foot ‡ The resthouse at Puswella is perched on the summit of knoll, a little distance off the road, and affords a fair amount of accommodation. A secluded pool, a stone's throw behind. the resthouse, at the foot of a small and shady glen into which a rocky stream pours its crystal waters, is a capital bathing place, a desideratum not always obtainable at a roadside resthouse in Ceylon. * Pus,' a kind of jungle creeper; 'wella,' a tract of sand. † A native resthouse. "The Siamese," says Baldæus, "exhibit a footstep impressed upon a stone on a mountain, which is an ell and a half long and three-fourths broad. The sides of it are covered with silver; and a magnificent temple is erected in the neighbourhood, round which many of the priests of the country, and other people dwell,” P Beyond Puswella, and near the 48th mile post from Colombo, is the river Kuru-ganga, a principal tributary to the Kalu-ganga. By diverging to the left of the main road at the village Higgaha-héna,* about half a mile before reaching the bridge, a walk for a mile and a half through alternating paddy fields and cocoanut plantations will bring one opposite the Kuruwita waterfalls, which are well worthy of inspection. At the time of our visit the waters were high, and the Kuru-ganga was rushing along its bed with a dangerous velocity. From a gap in the rocky ridge that faced us, and which formed an almost mountainous embankment to the river, a broad volume of water thundered down and leapt in broken masses of ever-changing form from rock to rock, until, after a fall of a hundred and fifty feet "the torrent with the many hues of heaven " that "flung its lines of foaming light along," surged against and mingled with the stream that hurried past to swell the waters of the Kalu-ganga. Besides the waterfall there are in this and an adjacent range, two remarkable caverns, or grottoes, or subterranean passages, six or seven miles apart from each other, the * Héna, or chena, a high jungle ground, cultivated at intervals, upon which originally grew the Hik, or Hulanhik trees, Chickrassia tabularis, AD. JUSS. |