can be seen overhead a sort of pocket or shallow cave with the remains of some frescoes. As a matter of fact, many of the " pockets" on the face of the cliff have been thus decorated, but this particular cave, containing two " pockets," is the most important. When first taken in charge by the Survey, they had suffered terribly from the work of mud-nesting birds and bees. The cave is not accessible to the ordinary visitor, but the frescoes have been faithfully reproduced, and the reproductions can be seen in the Colombo museum. The work was done in 1897 by Muhandiram D. A. L. Perera of the Survey, and done under difficulties of which only a faint idea can be conveyed. He had to lie on his back on an improvised scaffolding to get a proper view of the originals, and working thus he took nineteen weeks to complete the task, fighting against heat, flies, fever, cramp, and other torments, and latterly the south-west monsoon and the driving wind, but he has carried out the task to admiration, and enabled hundreds, who would never have seen them, to get a faithful idea of the originals.

The scenes represent the ladies of Kasyapa's court, with their attendants, carrying offerings of flowers to Piduragala, the vihara on the conical hill to the north of Sigiriya. They are similar to the paintings in the Ajanta caves, except that here the figures, all female, are only three-quarter length. There are twenty-one figures in this cave. The outlines are full and rich, marred by no anæmic tendencies, and the colouring of the flesh varies from yellow and orange in the case of the mistresses, to the greenish-blue

supposed to indicate a dark-skinned race, in the case of some of the serving-maids. Both mistresses and maids are highly ornamented: "Coronets, tiaras, aigrettes, crown the head; flowers and ribbons adorn the hair and ears; neck, breast, arms and wrists are loaded with a plethora of the heaviest ornaments and jewelled gauds." Though at the first glance these figures might be taken to be nude from the waist upwards, a second will show that they are all clad in a filmy gauze ending at the neck.

After the manner of his kind, Kasyapa, when he had gained what he wanted by crime, began to think himself of good works. He built, among other things, this vihara near his rock to which his women-folk resorted, and called it after his two daughters. In connection with this we find one of those homely touches of which the chronicles are full. Having eaten once of a meal of rice that a woman had prepared for him [the king] in the milk of coconut and ghee, flavoured highly with sweet condiments, he exclaimed, 'This is delicious! Such rice must I give unto the venerable ones,' and then he caused rice to be prepared in this manner, and gave it to all the brethren."

At the end of the gallery an iron bridge, carried round the cliff, supplies a missing part of the old work, and from it we mount by a staircase to a plateau, or lower level summit, projecting from the north side. There is a fine view of Piduragala and of the miles of jungle rolling around. To the west we can look down on the "Pulpit Rock," with its innumerable slots, and to the "Cistern Rock" near the foot of the ascent.

There are grass-grown mounds and heaps of red brick on the northern plateau, but all else is minimised by the sight of the stupendous cliff towering above, to be reached by a series of steps or iron ladders through a great brick-work mass at the foot. This is the famous "Lion Staircase House," once a mass of ruins but now restored. The only ancient parts remaining are the gigantic claws, about four feet high, on each side, made of brick partly plaster-covered. These give a measure for the original size of the beast, which was discovered in 1898 (see illustration, p. 161).

At first this huge pile of débris, with no shape or form, suggested nothing, but when enormous claws were excavated on each side, the clue was grasped. "Here then was a solution to the crux, which has exercised the surmises of writers, the difficulty of reconciling the categorical statements of the Mahawansa and the perpetration to the present day of the name, Sinha-giri, with the undeniable fact that no sculpture or paintings of lions exist on Sigiri-gala. That strange conceit, the 'lion-staircase-house,' the quaint grandly conceived break in the weary continuity of the tortuous gallery ever ascending, backed by the frowning rock, and crowning the highest terrace above the tallest forest trees, worthily emanated from the master-mind that designed that marvellous gallery and the complex citadel on Sigirigala."

By the end of 1904 progress in the ascent had been made possible, between 1905-7 reconstruction of all the high rising retaining walls which line the passage-way, with stairs and landings up