with that city. Parakrama was succeeded by weak and bad rulers, who failed to defend Polonnaruwa against the invaders, and in 1592 Kandy became the capital.

Europeans had begun to make themselves felt in the island, first the Portuguese and then the Dutch, appearing and pushing ever inwards to the seat of government in the hills. It was the hills that saved the native race then as before, for when the white-faced invaders appeared at Kandy, they found the precious Tooth-relic and other valuables had been carried away into inaccessible fastnesses.

Both races eventually had to give way before the British, who about the end of the eighteenth century established themselves on the sea-coast. After a long period of desultory fighting, and, it must be noted, some terrible blundering, the last king, Sri Wickrema Raja Singha, was deposed in 1814 and the island definitely became a British possession.

The later Kandyan kings were selfish despots of a mediæval type, who ruthlessly exploited their own subjects. By far the best account of the island during their régime is to be found in a book written by Robert Knox, who was a prisoner in the island for nineteen years from 1660. Knox was a sailor, and as a young man of nineteen was taken prisoner by the Cingalese, with his father and fourteen of their men, when they landed near Trincomalee, having put in to repair their ship. The king treated them with

1 Ceylon. (MacLehose. New edition 1911. First published

perfect humanity and quartered them on various members of the community. He commanded his subjects to find them food, but made no allowance for clothes. After about two years the captain, who shared a hut with his son, died, and for no less than nineteen and a half years the rest remained prisoners. The remarkable part of the story is, that the king, who was in other ways an unmitigated scoundrel, never ill-treated these helpless captives, though he was extraordinarily careful in not allowing them to escape. He was very suspicious of the written word, thinking that plans of escape might be made thereby.

On one occasion one of the English sailors had received a letter from a Portuguese, also a prisoner, and took it to a native to get it translated; this was discovered, and all three were condemned to death, and, according to the ghastly custom prevalent, were torn limb from limb by elephants.

The prisoners, after a while, were put to great shifts for clothing. So they started knitting caps to exchange them for garments, and did quite a brisk trade.

Stephen Rutland was the only other man, besides Knox, who had kept himself free from entanglements with native women, and the two lived together. They succeeded at last in getting quite a decent house and did a good deal of trading in grain and other things.

The king was absolutely autocratic; he would be waited on only by all the best looking youths in his kingdom, and messengers were sent round to collect them every now and again. These unfortunate youths never lived long. They were

invariably executed as the reward of their service. The parents knew quite well what service at court meant, and mourned their son as dead already when he was summoned, but dared not resist, for those who resisted the royal will were impaled or torn to pieces, or if women were flung into the river.

As Knox says, these youths went "like an ox to the slaughter, only with far more heavy hearts." Yet he is careful to explain there was no question of improper behaviour by the king in regard to them.

After the wretched youths were killed or handed over as slaves to some one-and one of these two fates none of them escaped-then their father's property was seized. The only good the parents got out of it was that while the boy was actually at court they were free from taxation, a dearly-bought and short-lived privilege.

The soldiers were not paid or even provided with food. Once during Knox's time there was a rebellion and the king fled to the hills, those who had engineered it not having the nerve to seize him before he was aware of it. His only child, a lad of fifteen, kept in close confinement by his father's orders, was brought out and set on the throne, but his aunt ran away with him to the king and the rebellion collapsed.

Knox says that the king himself shortly afterwards poisoned the boy to prevent the possible recurrence of such a plot, but this is not borne out by historical records.

He tells a story showing how unsafe were the heads of the royal entourage on their shoulders.

The king, while bathing in a pond, pretended to be drowning to see what his subjects would do. Two of them sprang in and rescued him. They were afterwards sent for-and executed! The pretext being they had presumed to lay hands on the king's sacred body! But in fact, presumably, because he could not bear the existence of anyone to whom he was under an obligation.

As year by year went by, Rutland and Knox planned their escape. They used to travel about and sell goods, extending their wanderings further and further north to gain familiarity with the country. The difficulty was the want of water. For beyond the zone of the rivers they were reduced to drinking from muddy pools fouled by animals, which gave them violent gripes. Besides this, at the limits of the king's territory, on all main tracks (and it was almost impossible to break through the jungle otherwise) were guards. At length, in October 1679, the pair managed to get as far as Anuradhapura, which Knox calls Anarodgburro, which was very near the limits of the king's territory.

"To Anarodgburro therefore we came, called also Neur Waug. Which is not so much a particular single Town as a territory. It is a vast green plain, the like I never saw in all the island, in the midst whereof is a lake, which may be a mile over, not natural, but made by Art, as other Ponds in the Country to serve them to water their corn grounds. This Plain is encompassed round with Woods, and small Towns among them on every side, inhabitated by Malabars, a distinct people from the Chingulays."

The comrades were brought before the governor, who required a good deal of talking before he was convinced that they were what they professed to be, namely prisoners allowed to go about trading (though they certainly would not have been allowed to wander to such a distance, had the king known it!). Finding it impossible, after reconnoitring, to get through the watch, stationed four or five miles out from the town, they turned back to the previous place they had come through, Colliwilla, whose governor they had satisfied by saying they were going off in search of deer's meat, promising to come back with it. But instead of going to Colliwilla they turned off about half-way, down a little stream Malwat Oya they had noticed, which they concluded must somehow find its way to the sea.

They had a terrible time on their way down to the coast. They were torn and lacerated with thorns, in constant terror of being caught and sent back to Kandy by the inhabitants, whose voices they often heard quite distinctly in the jungle. They were in alarm at wild elephants, which abounded, and they were armed only with knives fastened to long stakes. They carried also:

'Rice, flesh, fish, pepper, salt, a basin to boil our victuals in; two Calabasses to fetch water; two great Talipats (leaves of the Talipot palm) for tents, big enough to sleep under if it should rain, Jaggery (a kind of brown sugar), and sweetmeats, tobacco also and Betel, Tinder-boxes, two or three for failing, and a deer's skin to make us shoes."