348 Voyage of the Novara. 



of pride, recall to mind Carl Ritter's admirable, well-digested 

 publication upon Ceylon, in his classical work on Eastern Asia, 

 doubly meritorious by the very fact that the German scholar 

 never set foot in the country itself. There are, however, 

 indeed few spots on earth which present such inexhaustible 

 subjects for the study of the historian as well as the inquirer 

 into physical science, of the poet and the political economist, 

 as this romantically-beautiful island, which we have been 

 taught to regard as the Garden of the World, as indeed the 

 special site of the Garden of Eden, the first abode of the 

 progenitors of the human race. 



We have not to do here, as in most of the islands of 

 southern seas, with a savage people, that have only, since the 

 first appearance of Europeans, emerged from a state of bar- 

 barism, and been raised one step towards civilization, but 

 rather find, as in the East Indies and China, a peculiar type of 

 civilization, which, although widely diff"ering from that of 

 Europe, yet seems not less valuable and extraordinary. The 

 whites (scarce 7OOO in number, of whom 2482 are females), 

 who live scattered over an area of 24,700 English square 

 miles, have hitherto been too few in number to exercise any 

 marked influence on the customs or mode of life of a native 

 coloured population of 1,726,640 souls, and hence it is that 

 Ceylon exhibits a more romantic and characteristic air than 

 any other British settlement in distant parts of the globe. 



A people like the Cingalese, of such ardent imaginativeness, 

 with a splendid history, and a religion professed in the various 



