the Kalu-ganga, and other streams, the chief of which sprang from the ranges that immediately surrounded the isolated pinnacle upon which we stood. Standing there, and seeing all this, we felt there was not the slightest exaggeration in what Sir Emerson Tennent has written upon this scene, and which he thus sums up:-"The panorama from the summit of Adam's Peak is, perhaps, the grandest in the world, as no other mountain, although surpassing it in altitude, presents the same unobstructed view over land and sea. Around it, to the north and east, the traveller looks down on the zone of lofty hills that encircle the Kandian kingdom, whilst to the westward the eye is carried far over undulating plains, threaded by rivers like cords of silver, till in the purple distance the glitter of the sunbeams on the sea marks the line of the Indian Ocean."

J

Adam's Peak.

"Steep the descent and wearisome the way;
The twisted boughs forbade the light of day:
Upright and tall the trees of ages grow,
While all is loneliness and waste below:
There as the massy foliage, far aloof
Display'd a dark impenetrable roof,

So, gnarled and rigid, claspt and interwound

An uncouth maze of roots emboss'd the ground;

Midway beneath, the sylvan wild assumed

A milder aspect, shrubs and flow'rets bloom'd;
Openings of sky, and little plots of green,

And showers of sunbeams through the leaves were seen."*

CHAPTER VIII.

DESCENT FROM THE PEAK.

HERAMITIPA'NA. ·

ALEXANDER'S

Ridge.—Cave of Khi'zr. — Sı′ta GanGULA.— DHARMA-RA‍JAGALA. - UDA PAWEN ·ELLA, ACCIDENTS.- PALA BADDALA TO RATNAPURA.

COLD as we were, and fatigued as we felt, on our March trip, we divested ourselves of rugs and overcoats, and staff in hand, turned westwards on our homeward journey. Down the cliff went two of my companions, holding on by the

"The World before the Flood."

chains; and down the slanting ladder went he who had adventured up it. Arrived at the brow of the precipice, and seeing below me but one step for my foot, and infinite space beyond, I stopped short. Calling to the interpreter for assistance, for without it I could not go down, an active Vidaln* readily came forward, and with his and the interpreter's help, I accomplished the descent. This hesitation. on my part was neither the result of fear nor of dizziness, but of the stiffened state of my limbs, which began to fail and flag, and shew symptoms of inability to act simultaneously with the volition that directed their movements. It behoved me therefore to be cautious. Just as I went over the brink, my ears were saluted by a most melancholy whining howl. Our commissary-general's dog, answering to the name of "Tinker," who had made the pilgrimage with us, and scrambled up to the top of the Samanta-kúṭa, where he found a solitary canine friend to keep him company, on coming to this spot shrank back, and gave doleful vent to his dismay at the perils before him, and his grief at being forsaken;-for there we were obliged to leave him.

We observed in our descent that some of the links of the chains, and irons of the ladders, had short inscriptions engraved upon them; and that on the rocks here and there longer and more elaborate inscriptions had been cut. We were informed that in the one case they simply recorded

*A petty headman, or subordinate officer.

1

i

the names of those who had fixed or repaired those useful aids to the ascent; and in the other gave an account of pilgrims who had visited the Peak, some of whom had died when they had reached thus far.

We got back to Heramițipána in considerably less time than it took us to ascend from it the previous night; but we found the journey down the Samanala, much more painful and trying than the clamber up. We had observed the preceding day, that from some place below the station, on the sile on which we entered it coming from Palábaddala, the pilgrims brought up their supplies of water; and on returning from the Peak, in going down towards the Síta-gangula, we saw a descent to our left, which mistaking for the proper path, one of us went partially down before he discovered his error. About fifty or sixty feet below, he saw a clearing in a small dell, in the centre of which was a square kind of tank; and this dell he determined to examine on the occasion of his third visit. The result of the examination was, that he identified the station Heramițipána, and this place, as that described by Ibn Batuta, as "the ridge of Alexander, in which is a cave and a well of water," at the entrance to the mountain Serendib. The old Moor's account is somewhat confused, his notes or recollections not always carrying his facts exactly in their due order; but half-way down the descent, on the left hand, is a well, excavated in the rock, in which we found about five feet of water, and which swarmed with tadpoles. Possibly Batúta found it in the same condition, for he speaks of the well, at the entrance,

full of fish, of which "no one takes any." At the bottom of the dell is a cleared space; in the centre of this is a square tank, or well, the sides of which are formed of blocks of stone, six or eight feet long. Beyond this, almost facing the descent, some twenty feet up the opposite mountain's side, is a cave. To this my companion and I forced our way through the jungle, and came to the conclusion, that this was the cave of Khízr, where, Batúta says, "the pilgrims leave their provisions, and whatever else they have, and then ascend about two miles to the top of the mountain, to the place of Adam's) foot." In the preceding sentence he says, "Near this [cave] and on each side of the path, is a cistern cut in the rock." Now, no other place that we saw, or heard of,—and we were particularly minute in our inquiries,-answers to such a description. There are the two wells, and the cave; and the distance to the foot print is also pretty fairly estimated. Making due allowance for a few misplacements of positions, which old travellers, who more often than otherwise wrote from mere recollection, were prone to, the account Ibn Batuta gives of the route to the Peak,* will in its general accuracy, bear

* It is quite possible that the route has been slightly varied since Ibn Batuta wrote. I am inclined to think that the path originally led direct to the dell above described, from some point lower down the ascent to Heramiṭapána, and that the ascent to the Peak was also made direct from it. Heramițipána is however a better situated and more healthy position for a pilgrim station.