Vol. XVIII, No. 3 WASHINGTON 



March, 1907 



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Dr 



ATHOMAL 



©(SMAIPIHIIKD 



■AOA-MNE 







ARCHEOLOGY IN THE AIR 



By Eliza R. Scidmore 

 Author of "Java — the Garden of the East," "Winter India," etc. etc. 



Copyright igoj by the National Geographic Society 



WHEN I was first in Ceylon 

 and had driven the seventy 

 miles down to Anuradhapura 

 and seventy miles back again to Kandy, 

 the archaeologists had not taken Sigiri 

 in hand, and no tale of its wonders 

 tempted us from the straight and smooth 

 post-road. Ten years later every one 

 talked of Sigiri, and its fame was in the 

 very air. Copies of wonderfully pre- 

 served frescoes, done on Sigiri's rock 

 walls fourteen centuries ago, met one in 

 the Colombo Museum, and driving par- 

 ties came into Kandy and urged me to 

 go to Sigiri by all means ; but none of 

 these talkers had "climbed the Rock," 

 whatever that might mean. 



Ceylon, in its natural beauties, is a 

 fair pattern for Paradise, second only to 

 Java — the most beautiful country on 

 earth — and one appreciates this paradise 

 the more if he takes long driving trips 

 over the perfect roads. The short drive of 

 sixteen miles from Kandy down to Matale 

 is renowned as the finest drive in Ceylon 

 and is an unbroken panorama of ideal, 

 cultivated tropical beauty. For another 

 ten miles the road is arched over with 

 tamarind trees, festooned with pepper 



vines, and sentinelled here and there with 

 splendid banyans and talipot palms, with 

 the blue Matale mountains in the back- 

 ground. After that, cultivation lags, a 

 few miles of rice fields follow, and one 

 jogs along past the unending jungle of 

 the abandoned lowlands, where scant 

 rains fall only during three months of 

 the year. This region was once the rich- 

 est and most fertile in Ceylon, a vast rice 

 plain abundantly irrigated from tanks 

 and lakes that stored water beyond all 

 need. This rich plain and Anurad- 

 hapura, a city of fabulous wealth, 

 tempted the Tamils of the Indian main- 

 land to many raids, and after a last in- 

 vasion the marauders destroyed all the 

 tanks and canals before they retreated to 

 the Continent. Drought, disease, and 

 famine swept away the few remaining 

 inhabitants, jungle overran the territory, 

 and wild elephants trumpeted there un- 

 disturbed. Their paths and the pilgrim's 

 path through to the sacred Bo-Tree at 

 Anuradhapura were the only roads in the 

 wilderness, until coffee culture on the 

 Matale hills tempted Tamil coolies over 

 to Jaffna, whence they made their way 

 on foot to Kandy and the plantations. 



