Where asoka, pátali, and domba graceful grow;
Where champac, kina, sal, and erehindi blow;
Where rêranga, midell, and iron-wood appear,

And the sweet sugar-canes their slender stems uprear;

and an endless variety of magnificent forest trees and palms. and bamboo clumps reflect from either bank their images in the lucent stream, while in the back-ground rise the purple hills, their summits veiled in clouds, or sharply outlined in the clear blue sky.

A break down in our carriage was the cause of a day's detention here on our second journey. The village smith was however equal to the emergency, and while the repairs were being effected we strolled about the place, admiring the scenery, and listening to the somewhat monotonous if not doleful chants of the goyiyás† reaping their crops of kurakkan in the neighbouring fields and hill slopes. most refreshing bath in a secluded nook in the river just below the fort, was not the least pleasant of our enjoyments; and was moreover an excellent preparative for the capital dinner which "the Commandant" provided for us as the day drew to a close.

A

Between Hanwella and Awissawela the scenery is bolder and more varied than that already passed. Noble trees overarch the road, and plantations of jack, bread- and other fruit trees, indicate the industry of the inhabitants as well as

* Sela-lihini Sandése.

† Peasant women.

the fertility of the soil. In the early days of British enterprise, the cultivation of the sugar-cane and the indigo plant was attempted on an extensive scale in the neighbourhood; the results were not however so profitable as were anticipated, and the luckless speculators soon abandoned the scene of their operations. A pleasantly situated resthouse on the slope of a hill, at the foot of which lies the village of Awissawela, affords the traveller an opportunity for halting and devoting a day to the inspection of Sítáwaka, where some interesting ruins, together with a rock temple on a mountain opposite, well repay the trouble of a visit. In the clear atmosphere of the season of the northeast monsoon, a fine view of the Peak is seen from the road near the resthouse. Twentyone miles distant in a straight line, it rises from behind a range of mountains, which, when the southwest winds prevail, bounds the prospect on the horizon to the southeast. The hills on either side the road converging to this point, there is an apparent gap on the sky-line, save when, as on the occasion of our catching a glimpse of the Peak during our September excursion (the only one we had except when on the Peak itself,)

"a thousand cubits high

The sloping pyramid ascends the sky."

It then forms the central and most striking object in the scenery there beheld.

Adam's Peak.

"At last a temple built in antient days
Ere Æa was a town they came unto;
Huge was it, but not fair unto the view
Of one beholding from without, but round
The antient place they saw a spot of ground
Where laurels grew each side the temple door."

KO'WILA.-ROCK TEMPLE.-PUSwella.-KuruWITA WATER

VIHA'RA. WERALUPE. SAMAN DEWA'le.

THE village of Awissawela, "a field not to be trusted,”— so named from the character of its adjoining paddy lands, which were liable to sudden inundations,-is situated at the foot of bluff hills of black rock which rise almost perpendicularly from 900 to 1000 feet in height. From the time of the Portuguese to the annexation of the Kandian kingdom by the British, it was a post of importance; the territories

"The Life and Death of Jason."