VI DEDICATION, 
when 1 attribute all these ad vantages to the regulations and the 
cares of your Royal Highness, I only speak the sentiments 
of every officer and every private in his Majesty’s service- 
While your Royal Highness is occupied with objects 
of so much greater importance, I should not presume to 
intrude with the following Work upon your notice, were I not 
conscious that it was undertaken and completed chiefly with 
a view to point out to the attention and enterprise of this 
country a new acquisition of the greatest importance both 
in a commercial and political point of view. 
From the observations I then made, I am enabled to 
affirm that its retention in our hands must prove of the 
greatest benefit to our East India trade, and our commerce 
in general ; and is in this view a measure which must 
reflect the highest honour on the wisdom of his Majesty’s 
Councils. 
From the period of my arrival with his Majesty’s 19th 
regt. on the island of Ceylon shortly after its capture, I 
endeavoured, during my few leisure moments from military 
duty, to obtain as much useful information as an officer in 
my situation had it in his power to collect. 
Having had an opportunity of seeing different parts of the 
sea-coast, and also some of the interior, while serving with 
