The Singalese, for so are the people of Ceylon denominated, are still at that stage of imperfect civilization, in which legendary tales and historical romances supply the place of accurate record and authentic narrative. The inhabitants of eastern countries, too, seduced by their imagination still more perhaps than by their foolish pride, invest the origin of society and the commencement of regular government with the most extravagant and unnatural fictions, while they throw them back to a period so extremely remote, that it is hardly in the power of numbers to calculate the distance. In this the chroniclers of Ceylon, indeed, only follow the example and share the absurdity of their neighbours the Hindoos, and, we may add, of all the nations of oriental Asia.

But passing over those intricate and protracted dynasties of Singalese rulers, when lions and female demons gave heirs to the crown, we soon begin to discover the lineaments of true history mixing with the wild caricatures of romance. We can, for instance, mark the course of events clearly enough to discern, that the Malabars invaded and took possession of the northern parts of the island; that the religious dogmas of the priests were modified by an inroad of missionaries from the shores of the Birman empire; and that, amidst these changes produced by the hands of men, a dreadful catastrophe was occasioned by the agency of a great natural element. The sea broke in upon the land, destroyed four hundred fishing villages, and seventy villages of pearl-fishermen, and inundated twenty-four miles of country; reducing the distance between Kilany and the sea from twenty-four miles, which it was previously, to four miles, which it is at present. This event, however, unfortunately but too memorable in the history of Ceylon, is, by the legendary writers, ascribed to an act of tyranny on the part of King Kilany-tissa, who commanded a chief priest to be put to death. Nor did his majesty himself escape with impunity. "He was drawn down to the infernal re"gions by a flame of fire; and his beautiful daughter, of whom " he had made an offering to the Ocean, floated to Roona in the "Magampatoo, and was married to the prince who succeeded "her father."

A variety of wonders, all of the most fantastic nature imaginable, will not be found sufficient to induce the reader to peruse the history of the next hundred successive reigns. Among the marvels alluded to, however, there is one so extremely disinterested in its object, that it would be an injustice inflicted upon the royal blood of Lanka were we to pass it by unmentioned. A king, in the regular line of succession, knowing that his younger brother longed to enjoy secure possession of the throne, desired a man, who by the bye had been employed to murder him, to strike

off his head, and carry it to the impatient youth, as the most acceptable and satisfactory token whereby to certify him that the regal power was now wholly in his hands. The man refused to obey, declaring that, for all the riches in the world, he would not be guilty of the deed he had meditated, and which, in fact, he had travelled many miles to execute. Then the king, without farther parley, laid hold of his own head by the flowing ringlets, took it off, and gave it to the repentant assassin, charging him to make all haste in repairing with it to the seat of government. The man complied with the request so strangely made to him, carried the head to Anooradapoora, and presented it to the prince. This personage, however, who was remarkable for a very incredulous disposition, would give no faith to the messenger, and declared that the whole affair was the result of a most wicked imposture. The poor man, following the directions he had received from the defunct, requested that the head might be put on a white cloth on a chair; which being done, the lips opened, and pronounced three times, with an audible voice, “I

am the King Sirisangabo!" The miracle, of course, was conclusive. The prince repented, went to Attanagallé, burnt the body of his brother, and built a dagobah, which remains to this day; and rice, it is said, still grows there spontaneously.

After the lapse of several ages, a new people present themselves to the astonished Singalese. The adventurous squadrons of Portugal had, in the very beginning of the sixteenth century, discovered the island of Ceylon; and, about the year 1518, according to the best historians, that enterprising and commercial nation effected a settlement on the coast, at Colombo, where their ships were first seen by the natives. The description given of the Portuguese by the simple islanders is not a little amazing. They went to Cotta and informed the king "that a new people "was arrived, white, and beautifully made, who wore iron coats, ❝and iron caps, and drank blood, and ate stones; who

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gave a

gold coin for a fish, or even a lime; and who had a kind of "instrument which could produce thunder and lightning, and "balls which, put into these instruments, would fly many miles, ❝ and break ramparts, and destroy forts."

The wars and treaties, the intrigues and the massacres, which first taught the inhabitants of Ceylon their inferiority, in all the arts which minister to destruction, to the freebooters of the west, were found only to change their character a little, when, for the domination of the Portuguese, these islanders were induced to embrace the protection of their new allies the Dutch. It was in 1658 that the power of Portugal was totally annihilated in Ceylon, and succeeded by the influence of Holland; from which period,

till the year 1796, when the maritime provinces were ceded to Great Britain, the usual occurrences, incidental to a weak and divided country, exercised the patience, and once or twice provoked the opposition, of the mild Singalese.

Two years after our countrymen had obtained a footing in the island, the king died at Kandy, and, as Dr. Davy rather clumsily expresses it, "without a child by either of his five queens." This event paved the way for various changes in the state of affairs, created universal misery among the devoted people, and ultimately overthrew the ancient form of government, and with it the independence of Ceylon. These melancholy results were hastened by the ambitious views of Pilimè Talawé, the first Adikar, or minister of the crown, who, in order to effect his selfish purposes, procured the election of a young uneducated man, and sister's son of one of the queens dowager, afterwards known by the royal name of Sree Wekrimè Rajah Singha. The king, only eighteen years of age when he ascended the throne, consented at first to be used as a tool by the crafty Pilimè; but his savage heart, corrupted by the adulation of the slaves who surrounded him, did not fail very soon to prompt him, after the manner of the half-tamed bear, to turn upon his leader and tear him in pieces. It was with this monster that the war broke out in 1803, which, as connected with the melancholy fate of Major Davie and his companions, will never be recollected without horror and indignation; and as the circumstances that immediately followed the capitulation at Kandy are not generally known, we shall proceed to give an abridged account of them from the pages now before us.

In June, 1803, Kandy, then in possession of the English troops under the officer named above, was attacked by the natives, in presence of the king and his court stationed on an adjoining hill. After about seven hours fighting, Major Davie displayed a flag of truce. A conference ensued, the result of which was, that the English commander should march out of the city forthwith, leaving his sick and wounded behind him. The king, knowing that a large river in the line of march was so much flooded that the British could not pass it, took advantage of this circumstance and pursued them, compelling Major Davie to give up the brother-in-law of the late sovereign, though proclaimed king by our means, as well as five other relations of this unhappy person, who accompanied him in his expedition under our flag. These were all put to instant death. The next step in his miserable tragedy was an order to massacre the English. Laving hastily collected a force, he dispatched his minister and other chief to accomplish this bloody purpose; who, finding

the poor fugitives still stopped by the height of the river, and without any means of crossing it, desired Major Davie and the principal officers to come out to meet them, at some distance froin their men. Strange to say, the Major complied, and was immediately sent back to Kandy, with two of his captains, and a native officer of Malays. In the meantime, the Malays and Sepoys were persuaded to desert; and the British soldiers, being told that their officers had proceeded to cross at a ferry, were informed that they must lay down their arms, in order to be conducted by the same way. Too weak to resist, they did as they were desired, went over unarmed to the Kandyans, and were butchered to a man. About the same time, the hospital in Kandy, containing 120 men of the 19th regiment, was entered by the enemy, who, in pursuance of the diabolical orders under which they acted, threw the sick, the dead, and dying, all into a deep pit prepared to receive the wretched victims. Major Davie and his companions, whose lives were spared, were detained as prisoners, and died of sickness one after another in their cruel and unmerited captivity.

The year 1804, and part of 1805, were spent in a desultory and barbarous warfare, in the course of which the British troops inflicted a severe retaliation upon several bodies of the native soldiery, and spread much misery and terror over the face of the maritime provinces. From 1805 to 1815, the period during which the truce subsisted, no serious injury was received by our countrymen, the rage of the brutal monarch being directed all the while against his ministers and their dependents. Having dispatched Pilimè Tawalé, to whom he owed his elevation, he chose Eheylapola to be his first Adikar; and this functionary, with the greater part of the chiefs, being goaded to desperation by the furious tyranny of their master, openly raised the standard of rebellion in the year 1814. The insurgents were defeated and scattered; those taken in the field were mangled and put to death with a degree of studied cruelty, which, even at this distance of time and place, cannot but shake the strongest nerves; whilst the wife and children of the minister Ehey lapola, who had himself escaped and found a place of refuge, were immediately shut up in prison. With these poor innocents in his hand, the ferocious tyrant was not to be deprived of a victim. demned them all to death, together with the brother and brother's wife of the rebel chief, specifying that the brother and children were to be beheaded, and the females to be drowned. The execution scene we give in the words of Dr. Davy, and certainly a more shocking example of savage barbarity is not on record in any language whatever.

He con

"In front of the queen's palace, and between the Nata and the Maha Visnu Dewalè, as if to shock and insult the gods as well as the sex, the wife of Eheylapola and his children were brought from prison, where they had been in charge of female jailors, and delivered over to the executioners. The lady with great resolution maintained her and her children's innocence, and her lord's; at the same time submitting to the king's pleasure, and offering up her own and her offspring's lives, with the fervent hope that her husband would be benefited by the sacrifice. Having uttered these sentences aloud, she desired her eldest boy to submit to his fate. The poor boy, who was eleven years old, clung to his mother terrified and crying. Her second son, nine years old, heroically stepped forward; he bid his brother not to be afraid-he would shew him the way to die! By one blow of a sword, the head of this noble child was severed from his body. Streaming with blood, and hardly inanimate, it was thrown into a rice mortar. The pestle was put into the mother's hands, and she was ordered to pound it, or be disgracefully tortured. To avoid the disgrace, the wretched woman did lift the pestle and let it fall. One by one the heads of all her children were cut off; and one by one the poor mother--but the circumstance is too dreadful to be dwelt on. One of the children was a girl; and to wound a female is considered by the Singalese a monstrous crime. Another was an infant at the breast, and it was plucked from its mother's breast to be beheaded. When the head was severed from the body, the milk it had just drawn in ran out mingled with its blood! During this tragical scene, the crowd who had assembled to witness it wept and sobbed aloud, unable to suppress their feelings of grief and horror. Palihapanè Dissavè was so affected that he fainted, and was expelled his office for shewing such tender sensibility. During two days the whole of Kandy, with the exception of the tyrant's court, was as one house of mourning and lamentation; and so deep was the grief, that not a fire (it is said) was kindled, no food was dressed, and a general fast was held. After the execution of her children, the sufferings of the mother were speedily relieved. She, and her sister-in-law, and the wife and sister of Pusilla Dissave, were led to the little tank in the immediate neighbourhood of Kandy and drowned. Such are the prominent features of this period of terror, which even now no Kandyan thinks of without dread, and few describe without weeping."

This state of things could not long continue: the chiefs and the people were everywhere ripe for revolt, and only waited the approach of the British to throw off the yoke. But General Brownrigg, though he was satisfied that hostilities could not be averted, did not feel himself justified in interfering between the king and his subjects. He held it sufficient to make preparations, and distribute his forces in such a manner that they could act against the capital at a moment's notice. Nor was it long before the infatuated tyrant gave ample occasion for aggressive measures. Several of our native merchants, who had gone into the interior in pursuit of trade, were treated as spies, and sent back shockingly mutilated. "Ten of them, for example, were used as follows: The noses of all them were cut off; besides which, some were deprived of an arm, and others of their ears. Two only of these unfortunate men reached Colombo, presenting a most miserable spectacle-the amputated parts hanging suspended from