Mr. E. L. Layard's Rambles in Ceylon. 233 



saw. It is embowered in fruit-bearing trees and palms, and very- 

 clean, the whole surrounded by a stockade fence as a protection 

 against the wild beasts. It has a lovely tank well-stored with water- 

 fowl, fish, and alligators ; here, with a small boat, the naturalist 

 might procure a number of birds which he could not get elsewhere. 

 Plotus melanogaster, Gmel., and Hydrophasianus Chirurgus, Scop., 

 abounded ; the whistling teal (Dendrocygna arcuata, Cuvier), also in 

 large flights ; while on the trees along the bund, Buceros pica. Scop., 

 and Hcematornis Bido, Horsf., not to mention hosts of smaller 

 species, could have been procured. 



Next morning, Friday the 1 1th, we started early for Maddewatchy, 

 crossing two rivers en route, the Sitt-aar and the Pic-aar ; we had to 

 dig our way down the banks of the former, and make a bottom for 

 the latter with branches of trees laid on the mud. Over the Sitt-aar 

 is the first hill met with between Jaffna and Kandy ; near Madde- 

 watchy is another, called Issain-bassa-galla, literally the Rock of the 

 tortoise and owl, — a fine mass of rock, up one side of which we walked, 

 as it is a huge inclined plaui — and what a view burst upon us ! To 

 the northward the eye wandered on a vast sea of jungle, bounded 

 only by the horizon, the sole break being the hill near the Sitt-aar 

 rising out of the dense impenetrable forest. To the eastward, a few 

 isolated hills in the Bintenne country arose like islands from a leafy 

 ocean. To the southward, the Dambool rock and Kandian hills. On 

 the south-west, a faint glimmering, awakened by the setting sun, 

 pointed out the site of the far-famed tanks, while the mighty dagobas 

 of Anarajahpoora, rehcs of by-gone years and a debasing superstition, 

 reared their heads among the trees of the forest. We too stood on 

 the mouldering remains of a temple, a shapeless mass of brickwork, 

 while at our feet lay a half-sunken pillar, on which was carved the 

 image of the five-headed snake. The idolater had chosen well, when 

 he fixed his temple on this mass of solid rock ; man did indeed seem 

 like an atom in the scale of creation, when viewed from this height. Far 

 down below us we discerned a paddy field, on which grazed a herd of 

 buffaloes tended by a herdsman — they looked like specks ; we tried in 

 vain to make him hear our voices, so firing our guns in the air, we 

 descended from our high pinnacle. Among the brickwork I found 

 several specimens of Helix bistrialis, a huge gray scorpion, and vast 

 numbers of elephant ticks. Twenty minutes' drive brought us to 

 Maddewatchy, where we found comfortable shelter in the house of a 

 native, and B. having shot one duck on our road, and another on the 

 tank, we feasted well ; and while I skinned some birds, B. fell asleep 

 on his bed — a mass of cow-dung hardened and smoothened ! ! Taking 

 the gun I strolled into the tank, and saw, for the first time in this 

 comitry, the small pouchless adjutant, Leptoptilos javanica, Horsf., 

 but could not shoot it. The large kingfisher {Halcyon Ghurial) chat- 

 tered his harsh notes exultingly as he pounced on the frogs that swarm 

 in the shallows. I hunted in vain for some live specimens of Cyclo- 

 stoma ceylanicum and C. indicum*, that lay scattered dead in all 

 directions, and then threaded my way home again. 



We are well off for kingfishers here ; we have H. Ghurial, P., 

 * Vide Supplementary note. 



