Aetagalla. 107 



occupies the site of the former palace, and the ground 

 is strewn with fragments of columns and carved stones, 

 the remnants of the royal buildings. The modern town 

 consists of the bungalows of the European officials, each 

 surrounded with its own garden ; two or three streets 

 inhabited by Dutch descendants and by Moors ; and a 

 native bazaar, with the ordinary array of rice and curry 

 stuffs and cooking chattees of brass or burnt clay. 



The charm of the village is the unusual beauty of its 

 position. It rests within the shade of an enormous rock 

 of gneiss upwards of 600 feet in height, nearly denuded 

 of verdure, and so rounded and worn by time that it has 

 acquired the form of a couchant elephant, from which it 

 derives its name of Aetagalla, the Rock of the Tusker. 1 

 But Aetagalla is only the last eminence in a range of 

 similarly-formed rocky mountains, which here terminate 

 abruptly ; and which, from the fantastic shapes into 

 which their gigantic outlines have been wrought by the 

 action of the atmosphere, are called by the names of the 

 Tortoise Rock, the Eel Rock, and the Rock of the 

 Tusked Elephant. So impressed are the Singhalese by 

 the aspect of these stupendous masses that in ancient 

 grants lands are conveyed in perpetuity, or " so long as 

 the sun and the moon, so long as Aetagalla and Anda- 

 galla shall endure." ^ 



' Another enormous mass of gneiss ° Forbes quotes a Tamil conveyance 



is called the Kuruminiagalla, or the of land, the purchaser of which is to 



Beetle-rock, from its resemblance in " possess and enjoy it as long as the 



shape to the back of that insect, and sun and the moon, the earth and its 



hence is said to have been derived the vegetables, the mountains and the 



name of the town, Kuruna-galle or River Cauvery exist." [Oriental Me- 



Korne-galle. moirs, vol. ii. chap. ii. ) It will not fail 



