TnE HUMAN SPECIES. Ill 



mythological legends of the most remote antiquity. The sea, 

 in particular that portion to the north and east of the bridge, 

 denominated the Palk Strait, is the recorded space of a great 

 diluvian submersion, leaving, on the Ceylon side, evidence of 

 the fact, in the cluster of Jafnapatam islands, and innumerable 

 lakes and ponds on the Carnatic side, which partly recovered 

 from the inundation. The space of land submerged, extended 

 from longitude 9° to 10° 20" north, and from 79° to S0° 15" 

 east — above 3600 square miles, where mankind, as it appears, 

 was both a witness and a sufferer. Whether this particular 

 calamity was one of many postdiluvian events, resulting from 

 a return to equipoises, after a great convulsion in nature, or 

 whether it was in connection with the upheaving of Northern 

 Asia, must be mere conjecture, though it is certain that the 

 south coast for ages after, and even now, tends to continued 

 depression. 



CEYLON. 



But Ceylon, the Lanka, Sinhala, Dwipa, Taprobana, and 

 Salice, &c, of ancient classics, of the Hindoo and early Ara- 

 bian writers, as well as in the traditions of Southern and 

 Western Asia, and even in the opinion of a great modern 

 geologist, was the primeval abode of man, whose first station on 

 earth lay in the basin of Candy, girt round with high preci- 

 pices, where the Mavela Gonga rises from beneath the 

 summit of Mali or Hamateel, better known in Europe by the 

 name of Adam's Peak. This cone, though not the most 

 lofty in the island, rises to 7720 feet, and is seen, far out at 

 sea, towering over the high-girt vale, which, flourishing 

 in vegetation, may well have suggested an idea of Para- 

 dise. On the highest summit there is one of those manu- 

 factured impressions of human feet, which imposture repre- 

 sents to be of Adam or of Budha, and belongs to a very 



