animals with which the coach was singly horsed. We did the distance from Colombo to Ratnapura, 56 miles, at the rate of exactly four miles the hour, inclusive of the halfhour we rested at Awissawela. Starting from Awissawela at past midnight, already considerably cramped by our six hours' journey, we arranged for sleeping the remainder of the way, if sleep we could, in the following manner: No. 1 coiled on the driver's seat; No. 2 in the well of the coach on the top of the boxes and portmanteaux; and Nos. 3 and 4 on the side-seats parallel with him; their three pairs of legs protruding over the back of the machine, and the whole party presenting a most extraordinary group to the eyes of any who in the bright moonlight might have seen them as they were dragged by each gaunt horse at a funeral pace from stage to stage. Not unfrequently we came to a dead stop on a soft piece of road, or where a length of hill proved an obstacle too much for the animal's strength to surmount:" and certainly had the road not been in very fair order, we should have had to have bivouacked by the way, instead of breakfasting at the bungalow of our excellent host and fellowpilgrim, whose house was to be our head-quarters, and who was anxiously awaiting us a mile on the road before we It is only fair to state, that since the time of the excursion referred to, there has been an improvement in both horses and coaches in the Ratnapura Royal Mail. But a more uncomfortable night journey can still scarcely be made, as the writer and his companion found to their cost on their Christmas journeys to and fro. drew up in front of the low hill on the brow of which stands Ratnapura Fort. The morning, a couple of hours before sunrise, was raw, cold, and misty, but as it advanced, and the sun rose behind the mountains, they came out clear and sharp in the rosy golden-tinted sky; and when we saw three small looking pyramidal peaks of apparently just the same level, filling the space formed by a gap in the nearest range through which the Kalu-ganga (black river) winds its way, it was hard to believe that one of them, about twelve miles off in a direct line, but distant nearly thirty by the road, was indeed Adam's Peak itself, the lofty sky-piercing cone seen in the distant mountain view from Colombo and its adjacent Cinnamon Gardens: yet so it was, and to reach the top of that Peak we purposed starting on the morrow's dawn. The peaks we saw, belonged, in fact, to two distinct mountains. One, the Bena Samanala, nearly faces the other, and has two summits, the highest of which is called the False Peak. These two being brought into line with the true Peak at the place where we caught sight of them, the intervening distances had the effect of reducing the apparent altitude of the two hindermost to the exact level of the foremost. This night journey by coach is anything but agreeable; * "PTOLEMY describes, in his "System of Geography," two chains of mountains, one of them surrounding Adam's Peak, which he designates as Malea, the names by which the hills that environ it are known in the Mahawansó."-Sir J. E. TENNENT'S Ceylon, vol. i. p. 535-6. and the traveller who has time at his command would do well to proceed leisurely from stage to stage and make himself acquainted with the places of interest that lie along his route. This-diverging from the Bridge of Boats that leads to the great, but since the opening of the Railway between Colombo and Kandy, now little used highway to the mountain capital,-runs partially along the left bank of the Kelani-ganga, and forms, as far as Awissawela, a portion of what used to be known as the old Kandy road. The extended views and occasional glimpses of river scenery that greet the eye from the road, now skirting and now receding from the flowing stream, here narrow and rapid and there broadened into a placid lake-like bend, are exquisitely beautiful, and go far to justify the phrase that the Island of Ceylon is the "Eden of the Eastern wave." Distant about three miles from Grandpass (the road leading from Colombo to the Bridge of Boats) the traveller passes by Panabakkery, once an extensive Government brick and tile manufactory, and also the training station for the elephant establishment belonging to the Public Works Department, where every now and again might be witnessed the operations by which the old tamed giants of the forest brought into subjection their newly caught companions, and intelligently, as well as literally by brute force, instructed them in the duties they were thenceforth to perform in the service of their lord and master, Man. A little beyond Panabakkery, is an ancient Buddhist temple, the Kitsirimewan Kelaniya vihára, probably originally built by king Kitsirimewan, after whom it is named, and who reigned A. D. 302-330. To visit it the traveller has to branch off from the main up one of the minor roads. The resident priest, in lately making some excavations on the spot, dug up a stone, upon which was a Sinhalese inscription partly effaced, but which, as far as has hitherto been made out, indicates that the temple had been repaired by or under the directions of Prákkrama Báhu I., in the latter half of the twelfth century. About two miles further from Colombo, on the north bank of the river, is the village Kelani, from which place, the river derives its name. Formerly the capital, and for ages the chief seat of the worship of the deified king Vibhíshana, the friend of Ráma, and traitorous brother and successor to Ráwana on the throne of Lanka [B. C. 2387] it still possesses as a memorial of its antiquity, a dagoba, which B. c. 280 was erected by the tributary king Yatalútissa over one asserted by Buddhists to have been built on the same spot by the Nága king Mahódara, B. C. 580. Connected with, and contiguous to the dágoba, are a vilára and monastery, the Raja-maha Kelaniya, so-called to distinguish it from the Kitsirimewan Kelaniya, on the opposite side of the river. The approach to this vihára is up a noble flight of broad stone slabs, and through an ancient gateway; but the steps, gateway and dágoba, are the only remains of antiquity; the rest of the buildings are of modern date, the older structures having been ruthlessly destroyed during the Malabar invasions, as well as in the wars with the Portuguese, and the intestine struggles for power among the Sinhalese themselves. There is also a recently built lofty tower or belfry of a curious composite order of architecture. What the place once was has been described in glowing terms in the "Sela-lihini Sandése," written when Ceylon had attained to perhaps its highest pitch of prosperity under native rule, during the reign of Prákkrama Báhu VI.* Who with the three-score four gemm'd ornaments robed round— Who 'neath one white umbrella's canopying shade Had brought the whole of Lanka, one kingdom of her made : Who pride of haughty foes had humbled in the dust; Who skill'd was in each science; in king-craft wise and just; The poet's art and dancing; who far had banish'd sin The sites of the spots then famous are still pointed out by priests and people, who every July swarm thither by tens of thousands; a national pilgrimage to the place made holy by the presence and relics of the founder of their faith. Externally the vihára is a plain and unpretentious tiled *A. D. 1410-1462. |