298 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1926 
Rome penetrated to these far eastern lands and called the island 
Taprobane, the name employed by Milton for “India’s furthest 
isle ”—and later, in A. D. 1507, came the Portuguese and took pos- 
session of the country, only to be dispossessed in A. D. 1656 by the 
Dutch, who in their turn gave place to the British in A. D. 1796. 
The latter, however, were the only people who ever penetrated to 
the interior and took possession of the whole island, which they did 
in A, D. 1815. 
Ceylon has an area of 25,332 square miles, and is thus about five- 
sixths the size of Ireland, and now has a population of 4,500,000, 
consisting chiefly of Singhalese, Tamils, “ Moormen” (the descend- 
ants of ancient Arab traders, of whom Sinbad the Sailor was one), 
Burgers (the descendants of the Dutch people), and the English. 
The island supplies its own food and exports tea, rubber, and the 
products of the coconut. The people are prosperous and contented 
and have representative government under a governor appointed by 
the Crown. 
The periphery of the island consists of a plain only a few feet 
above sea level, narrow in the south but much wider in the north, 
and which marks a comparatively recent and very moderate eleva- 
tion of the island above sea level. From this coastal plain the cen- 
tral and southern portions of the island rise rapidly into higher 
land, culminating in mountain peaks, of which the most celebrated, 
though not quite the highest, is Adam’s Peak (7,353 feet). 
The higher portion of the island is composed exclusively of very 
ancient Archean rocks, closely resembling those of certain parts 
of the Laurentian area of North America and probably of the 
same age. 
There is no evidence that this area of ancient rock has ever been 
under water. It is believed to owe its present form to the long- 
continued processes of subaerial deeay acting through the almost 
endless ages of geological time. This decay is still continuing 
everywhere. The rocks over large parts of this interior portion 
of the island are thus mantled with reddish residual clay, which 
forms the fertile soil of the rubber and tea plantations, clothing the 
steep slope of these ancient hills, and which is washed down into 
the river valleys, forming alluvial flats and discoloring deeply the 
waters of all the streams and rivers which flow through them. 
This clay in some places is replaced by a relatively hard, red laterite 
or lateritelike material, which, while soft enough to be very readily 
worked, shows a marked resistance to the action of the weather 
and is very generally employed for building houses. 
While this decay is often deep-seated, it is remarkable to observe 
the very rapid transition from the completely decomposed rock 
represented by the red clay to the perfectly fresh rock, the two 
