510 THE NORTHERN FORESTS. [Part IX. 



result of their policy was tlie inipoverisliment and 

 desolation of the Wanny, without insming its thorough 

 subjection. The people, impatient of their presence 

 and control, appear to have abandoned agriculture and 

 peaceful pursuits, and to have betaken themselves to 

 a wild and marauding hfe, making sudden descents on 

 the cultivated lands on either seaborde of the island, and 

 carrying on a predatory warfare against the Dutch in 

 their settlements at Manaar and Trincomahe. They 

 penetrated even into the peninsula of Jaffna, across the 

 isthmus of which the Dutch were compelled to build a 

 hue of small forts, and to loophole the church at Elephant 

 Pass, in order to keep the Wannyahs at bay. 



After the transfer of the sovereignty of Ceylon to 

 the British, the excesses and turbulence of this part 

 of the country still continued. In 1803, on the occa- 

 sion of our first hostihties with the king of Kandy, 

 Pandara Wannyah, an iirfluential chief on the borders of 

 the Neuera-kalawa district, undertook to expel the En- 

 glish from his country, and succeeded in occupying 

 Cottiar, on the bay of Trincomahe. He drove out the 

 garrison at Moeletivoe, and seized the fort, which had 

 been left in charge of a British officer and a few 

 Sepoys ; — they escaped in a fisher's boat to Jaffna, 

 whilst the insurgents carried away some useless cannon, 

 that still he bmied in a rice field near the Padivil tank. 

 The attempt was of course followed by no permanent 

 success ; the insurgents were speedily dislodged ; the 

 forts retaken, and the power of the chiefs of the Wanny 

 was finally and effectually extinguished. Their last 

 descendant and representative was an old lady, who, in 

 1848, resided near the fort of Jaffna, and enjoyed a 

 small hereditary estate, the remnant of her ancestral 

 possessions. 



The result of these intestine wars and calamities 

 consummated the ruin of the Wanny ; the cattle, so 

 essential to cidtivation, were carried off; the tanks were 

 injured, partly through abandonment, and partly by 



