34 NATURAL HISTORY OF 



Jafhapatam islands, and innumerable lakes and ponds 

 on the Carnatic side, which partly recovered from the 

 inundation. The space of land submerged, extended 

 from longitude 9 to 10 20" north, and from 79 to 

 80 15" east above 3600 square miles, where man- 

 kind, as it appears, was both a witness and a sufferer. 

 Whether this particular calamity was one of many post- 

 diluvian events, resulting from a return to equipoises, 

 after a great convulsion in nature, or whether it was 

 in connection with the upheaving of Northern Asia, 

 must be mere conjecture, though it is certain, that the 

 south coast, for ages after, and even now, tends to con- 

 tinued depression. 



CEYLON. 



BUT Ceylon, the Lanka, Sinhala, Dwipa, Taprobana, 

 and Salice, &c., of ancient classics, of the Hindoo and 

 early Arabian writers, as well as in the traditions of 

 Southern and Western Asia, and even in the opinion 

 of a great modern geologist, was the primeval abode of 

 man, whose first station on earth lay in the basin of 

 Candy, girt round with high precipices, where the Ma- 

 vela Gonga rises from beneath the summit of Mali or 

 Hamateel, better known in Europe by the name of 

 Adam's Peak. This cone, though not the most lofty in 

 the island, rises to 7720 feet, and is seen, far out at 

 sea, towering over the high girt vale, which flourishing 



