XXVI - INTRODUCTION. 



attention which the author had paid to the ancient 

 records of the island, whose contents were then under- 

 going investigation by the erudite and indefatigable 



TURNOUB. 1 



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, I experienced frequent inconvenience from 

 this dearth of local knowledge. 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 for public utility, on which the prosperity 

 of the country had at one time been dependent ; arti- 

 ficial lakes, with their conduits and canals for irri- 

 gation, 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, I was met by the same unvarying reply; 

 that information regarding them might possibly be 



1 See Vol. I. Part m. cli. iii. p. 3] 2. 



