XXVI INTRODUCTION. 



tioii wliicli the author had paid to the aneient records of 

 the island, whose contents were then undergoing in^^es- 

 tigation by the erudite and indefatigable Tuenour.^ 



In 1843 Mr. Bennett, a retired civil servant of the 

 colony, who had studied some branches of its natural 

 history, and especially its ichthyology, embodied 

 his experiences in a volume entitled " Ceylon and 

 its Capabilities ^^^ containing a mass of information, 

 somewhat defective in arrangement. These and a 

 number of minor publications, chiefly descriptive of 

 sporting tours in search of elephants and deer, with 

 incidental notices of the sublime scenery and majestic 

 ruins of the island, were the only modern works that 

 treated of Ceylon ; but no one of them sufficed to furnish 

 a connected view of the colony at the present day, 

 contrasting its former state with the condition to which 

 it has attained under the government of Great Britain. 



On arriving in Ceylon and entering on my official 

 functions, this absence of local knowledge entailed 

 frequent inconvenience. In my tours throughout the 

 interior, I found ancient monuments, apparently defying 

 decay, of which no one could tell the date or the founder ; 

 and temples and cities in ruins, whose destroyers were 

 equally unknown. There were vast structures of public 

 utility, on which the prosperity of the country had at 

 one time been dependent ; artificial lakes, with their con- 

 duits and canals for irrigation ; the condition of which 

 rendered it interesting to ascertain the period of their 

 formation, and the causes of their abandonment; but 

 to every inquiry of this nature, there was the same 

 unvarying rej^ly : that information regarding them 

 might possibly be found in the Mahawaiiso^ or in some 



^ See Vol. I. Part iii. cli. iii. p. 312. 



