42 
History of Ceylon 
vernors were either sufficiently enlightened or disinterested to 
persevere in them. As they were usually men of no education, 
and entirely of mercantile habits, they could not extend their 
views to distant advantages ; and if they could accumulate a 
fortune by acts of extortion on the natives, they little regarded 
how prejudicial such conduct might prove to the future inte- 
rests of their country. 
The renewed oppressions of the Dutch were the constant 
signal for the renewal of hostilities between them and the na- 
tives. A long course of warfare rendered the Ceylonese both 
4 
brave and dexterous. The Dutch were frequently repulsed 
even in close combat ; several of their forts were taken ; and 
whenever they attempted to penetrate into the interior parts 
of the island, they seldom failed to lose large parties of their 
men in attempting to force the woods and defiles, or by the am- 
bushes with which their vigilant and active enemy every where 
surrounded them. But European discipline and Dutch per- 
severance frequently surmounted all these difficulties. The King 
of Candy saw those woods, which he looked upon as impene- 
trable barriers, burst through ; and the Dutch soldiers appear- 
ed in those vallies, where indeed there were no fortifications, 
as their native possessors never supposed they could haVe been 
approached by a foe. The King was twice driven from his 
capital of Candy, and forced to seek for refuge in the moun- 
tains of Digliggy, the highest and m.ost impenetrable in his 
kingdom. Plere, however, he found himself secure from the 
pursuit of the enemy, and contented himself with surprizing 
and cutting off their convoys of provisions and stores sent up 
from the coast, till they should of their own accord abandon 
his dominions. This, after all their victories, they were con- 
