254 
Dommion's of Candy. 
try, causes heavy fogs and unwholesome damps to pre^^ail. 
Every evening the fogs fall with the close of day, and are not 
again dissipated till the sun has acquired great power. The 
vallies are in general marshy, full of springs, and excellently 
adapted for the cultivation of rice and rearing of cattle. These 
advantages, hov/ever, are greatly counteracted by the unhealthi- 
ness of the climate in these parts after the rainy season. The 
principal diherence between the climate of the interior and 
that of the coasts, is occasioned by the stagnation of the at- 
mosphere in the former. The depth of the vallies and the 
thickness of the woods conspire to prevent the free circulation 
of air ; and hence the night is constantly attended with exces- 
sive cold damps, wdiich are succeeded by days equally noxious 
from their hot and sultry vapours. An European on comino' 
into the interior is very liable to catch the hill or jungle fever. 
It is a disease resembling our ague and intermittent fever, ac- 
companied with a violent dysentery, and never leaves the per- 
son attacked, if he does not immediately change his residence to 
the sea-coast, where the climate is more -cool and refreshin^f 
by day, while it is free from the cold and damps of the night. 
The country of Candy can never receive any improvement 
from internal navigation. Several large rivers indeed intersect 
it; but these during the miny season are rendered so rapid and 
impetuous by the torrents which fall into them from the sur- 
jounding hills, that no boat can venture upon them ; while in 
the opposite season they are almost completely dried up. Tlie 
Malivagonga, which is the largest of these rivers, rises at the 
foot of Adam’s Peak, a high mountain to the south-west of 
Candy, and taking a north-east direction, nearly surrounds the 
icapital, and at length falls into the sea at Trincomalee, The 
