CHAPTER I. PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.-GEOLOGY.-MINERALOGY.-GEMS, CLIMATE, ETC. it GENERAL ASPECT.-Ceylon, from whatever direction may be approached, unfolds a scene of loveliness and grandeur unsurpassed, if it be rivalled, by any land in the universe. The traveller from Bengal, leaving behind the melancholy delta of the Ganges and the torrid coast of Coromandel; or the adventurer from Europe, recently inured to the sands of Egypt and the scorched headlands of Arabia, is alike entranced by the vision of beauty which expands before him as the island rises from the sea, its lofty mountains covered by luxuriant forests, and its shores, till they meet the ripple of the waves, bright with the foliage of perpetual spring. The Brahmans designated it by the epithet of Lanka, "the resplendent," and in their dreamy rhapsodies extolled it as the region of mystery and sublimity1; the Buddhist poets gracefully apostrophised it 1 "Ils en ont fait une espèce de paradis, et se sont imaginé que des êtres d'une nature angélique les habitaient."- ALBYROUNI, Traité des Eres, &c.; REINAUD, Géographie d'Abouljéda, Introd. sec. iii. p. ccxxiv. The renown of Ceylon as it reached Europe in the seventeenth century is thus summed up by PURCHAS in His Pilgrimage, b. v. c. 18, p. 550:"The heauens with their dewes, the ayre with a pleasant holesomenesse and fragrant freshnesse, the waters in their many riuers and fountaines, the earth diuersified in aspiring hills, lowly vales, equall and indifferent plaines, filled in her inward chambers with mettalls and jewells, in her outward court and vpper face stored with whole woods of the best cinnamon that the sunne seeth; besides fruits, oranges, leimons, &c. surmounting those of Spaine; fowles and beasts, both tame and wilde (among which is their elephant honoured by a naturall acknowledgement of excellence of all other elephants in the world). These all have conspired and joined in common league to present vnto Zeilan as a pearl upon the brow of India ;" the Chinese knew it as the "island of jewels;" the Greeks as the "land of the hyacinth and the ruby;" the Mahometans, in the intensity of their delight, assigned it to the exiled parents of mankind as a new elysium to console them for the loss of Paradise; and the early navigators of Europe, as they returned dazzled with its gems, and laden with its costly spices, propagated the fable that far to seaward the very breeze that blew from it was redolent of perfume.1 In later and less imaginative times, Ceylon has still maintained the renown of its attractions, and exhibits in all its varied charms "the highest conceivable development of Indian nature."2 Picturesque Outline. 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 the chiefe of worldly treasures and pleasures, with a long and healthfull life in the inhabitants to enjoye them. No marvell then, if sense and sensualitie haue heere stumbled on a paradise." The fable of the "spicy breezes" said to blow from Arabia and India, is as old as Ctesias; and is eagerly repeated by Pliny, lib. xii. c. 42. The Greeks borrowed the tale from the Hindus, who believe that the Chandana or sandal-wood imparts its odours to the winds; and their poets speak of the Malayan as the westerns did of the Sabaan breezes. But the allusion to such perfumed winds was a trope common to all the discoverers of unknown lands: the companions of Columbus ascribed them to the region of the Antilles; and Verrazani and Sir Walter Raleigh scented them off the coast of Carolina. Milton borrowed from Diodorus Siculus, lib. iii. c. 46, the statement that "Far off at sea north-east winds blow Sabæan odours from the spicy shore Of Araby the Blest." (P. L. iv. 163 ) Ariosto employs the same imaginative embellishment to describe the charms of Cyprus: "Serpillo e persa e rose e gigli e croco Spargon dall' odorifero terreno Tanta suavità, ch' in mar sentire La fa ogui vento che da terra spire. (Orl. Fur. xviii. 138.) That some aromatic smell is perceptible far to seaward, in the vicinity of certain tropical countries, is unquestionable; and in the instance of Cuba, an odour like that of violets, which is discernible two or three miles from land, when the wind is off the shore, has been traced by Poeppig to a species of Tetracera, a climbing plant which diffuses its odour during the night. But in the case of Ceylon, if the existence of such a perfume be not altogether imaginary, the fact has been falsified by identifying the alleged fragrance with cinnamon, the truth being that the cinnamon laurel exhales no aroma whatever, and the peculiar odour of the spice is only perceptible after the bark has been separated and dried. 2 LASSEN, Indische Alterthumskunde, vol. i. p. 198. 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. Foliage and Verdure.-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 tre |