There were vast structures of public utility, on which the prosperity of the country had at one time been dependent; artificial lakes, with their conduits and canals for irrigation; the condition of which rendered it interesting to ascertain the period of their formation, and the causes of their abandonment; but to every inquiry of this nature, there was the same unvarying reply: that information regarding them might possibly be found in the _Mahawanso_ or in some other of the native chronicles; but that few had ever read them, and none had succeeded in reproducing them for popular instruction.
A still more serious embarrassment arose from the want of authorities to throw light on questions that were sometimes the subject of administrative deliberation: there were native customs which no available materials sufficed to illustrate; and native claims, often serious in their importance, the consideration of which was obstructed by a similar dearth of authentic data.

With a view to executive measures, I was frequently desirous of consulting the records of the two European governments, under which the island had been administered for 300 years before the arrival of the British; their experience might have served as a guide, and even their failures would have pointed out errors to be avoided; but here, again, I had to encounter disappointment: in answer to my inquiries, I was assured that _the records, both of the Portuguese and Dutch, had long since disappeared from the archives of the colony_.
Their loss, whilst in our custody, is the more remarkable, considering the value which was attached to them by our predecessors.

The Dutch, on the conquest of Ceylon in the seventeenth century, seized the official accounts and papers of the Portuguese; and a memoir is preserved by VALENTYN, in which the Governor, Van Goens, on handing over the command to his successor in 1663, enjoins on him the study of these important documents, and expresses anxiety for their careful preservation.[1] [Footnote 1: VALENTYN, _Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien_, &c., ch.xiii.

p.
174.] The British, on the capture of Colombo in 1796, were equally solicitous to obtain possession of the records of the Dutch Government.

By Art.
XIV.