168 MAMMALIA. [Chap. V. 
wrought by the action of the atmosphere, are called by 
the names of the Tortoise Rock, the Eel Rock, and the 
Rock of the Tusked Elephant. So impressed are the 
Singhalese by the aspect of these stupendous masses 
that in ancient grants lands are conveyed in perpetuity, 
or " so long as the sun and the moon, so long as 
Aetagalla and Andagalla shall endure." 1 
Kornegalle is the resort of Buddhists from the re- 
motest parts of the island, who come to visit an ancient 
temple on the summit of the great rock, to which access 
is had from the valley below by means of steep paths 
and steps hewn out of the solid stone. Here the chief 
object of veneration is a copy of the sacred footstep 
hollowed in the granite, similar to that which confers 
sanctity on Adam's Peak, the towering apex of which^ 
about forty miles distant, the pilgrims can discern from 
Aetagalla. 
At times the heat at Kornegalle is intense, in con- 
sequence of the perpetual glow diffused from these 
granite cliffs. The warmth they acquire during the 
blaze of noon becomes almost intolerable towards 
evening, and the sultry night is too short to permit 
them to cool between the setting and the rising of the 
sun. The district is also liable to occasional droughts 
when the watercourses fail, and the tanks are dried up. 
One of these calamities occurred about the period of my 
visit, and such Was the suffering of the wild animals 
that numbers of crocodiles and bears made their way 
1 Foebes quotes a Tamil con- chap. ii. It will not fail to be 
veyance of land, the purchaser of observed, that the same figure was 
which is to " possess and enjoy it employed in Hebrew literature as 
as long as the sun and the moon, a type of duration—" They shall 
the earth and its vegetables, the fear thee, so long as the sun and 
mountains and the Eiver Cauvery moon endure ; throughout all gene- 
exist." — Oriental Memoirs, vol. ii. rations." — Psalm Ixxii. 5, 17. 
