THE ISLAND OF CEYLON. 
230 
ing of cattle. These advantages, however, are greatly coun- 
teracted by the unhealthiness of the climate in these parts 
after the rainy season. The principal difference between the 
climate of the interior and that of the coasts, is occasioned 
by the stagnation of the atmosphere 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 excessive cold damps, which are suc- 
ceeded by days equally noxious from their hot and sultry 
vapours. An European on coming into the interior is very 
liable to catch the hill or jungle fever. It is a disease re- 
sembling our ague and intermittent fever, and never leaves 
the person attacked, if he does not immediately change his 
residence to the sea-coast, where the climate is more cool 
and refreshing 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 inter- 
sect it; but these during the rainy season are rendered so 
rapid and impetuous by the torrents which fall into them 
from the surrounding hills, that no boat can venture upon 
them ; while in the opposite season they are almost com- 
pletely dried up. The 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 capital, and at length falls into the sea 
at Trincomalee. The Mulivaddy, the next principal river 
