CHAPTER L 



PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. GEOLOGY. MINERALOGY. GEMS, 

 CLIMATE, ETC. 



GENERAL ASPECT. Ceylon, from whatever direction it 

 is approached, unfolds a scene of loveliness and gran- 

 deur unsurpassed, if it be rivalled, by any land in the 

 universe. The traveller from Bengal, leaving behind 

 the melancholy delta of the Ganges and the torrid 

 coast of Coromandel ; or the adventurer from Europe, 

 recently inured to the sands of Egypt and the scorched 

 headlands of Arabia, is alike entranced by the vision of 

 beauty which expands before him as the island rises from 

 the sea, its lofty mountains covered by luxuriant forests, 

 and its shores, till they meet the ripple of the waves, 

 bright with the foliage of perpetual spring. 



The Brahmans designated it by the epithet of " the 

 resplendent," and in their dreamy rhapsodies ex- 

 tolled it as the region of mystery and sublimity x ; 

 the Buddhist poets gracefully apostrophised it as "a 



1 " Us en ont fait une espece de 

 paradis, et se sont imaging que des 

 etres d'une nature angelique les ha- 

 bitaient." ALBYROTTNI, Traits des 

 Eres, 8fc. ; REINATJD, Geographic 

 cFAboidfeda, Introd. sec. iii. p. ccxxiv. 

 The renown of Ceylon as it reached 

 Europe in the seventeenth century is 

 thus summed up by PURCHAS in His 

 nir/rimage, b. v. c. 18, p. 550 : 

 " The heauens with their dewes, the 

 ayre with a pleasant holesomenesse 



and fragrant freshnesse, the waters in 

 their many riuers and fountaines, 

 the earth diuersified in aspiring hills, 

 lowly vales, equall and indifferent 

 plaines, filled in her inward chambers 

 with mettalls and Jewells, in her 

 outward court and vpper face stored 

 with whole woods of the best cin- 

 namon that the sunne seeth j besides 

 fruits, oranges, lemons, &c. surmount- 

 ing those of Spaine ; fowles and 

 beasts, both tame and wilde (among 



2 



