Every bold elevation is crowned by battlemented cliffs, and flanked by chasms in which the shattered strata are seen as sharp and as rugged as if they had but recently undergone the grand convulsion that displaced them.
_Foliage and Verdure_ .-- The soil in these regions is consequently light and unremunerative, but the plentiful moisture arising from the interception of every passing vapour from the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal, added to the intense warmth of the atmosphere, combine to force a vegetation so rich and luxuriant, that imagination can picture nothing more wondrous and charming; every level spot is enamelled with verdure, forests of never-fading bloom cover mountain and valley; flowers of the brightest hues grow in profusion over the plains, and delicate climbing plants, rooted in the shelving rocks, hang in huge festoons down the edge of every precipice.
Unlike the forests of Europe, in which the excess of some peculiar trees imparts a character of monotony and graveness to the outline and colouring, the forests of Ceylon are singularly attractive from the endless variety of their foliage, and the vivid contrast of its hues.
The mountains, especially those looking towards the east and south, rise abruptly to prodigious and almost precipitous heights above the level plains; the rivers wind through woods below like threads of silver through green embroidery, till they are lost in a dim haze which conceals the far horizon; and through this a line of tremulous light marks where the sunbeams are glittering among the waves upon the distant shore.
From age to age a scene so lovely has imparted a colouring of romance to the adventures of the seamen who, in the eagerness of commerce, swept round the shores of India, to bring back the pearls and precious stones, the cinnamon and odours, of Ceylon.

The tales of the Arabians are fraught with the wonders of "Serendib;" and the mariners of the Persian Gulf have left a record of their delight in reaching the calm havens of the island, and reposing for months together in valleys where the waters of the sea were overshadowed by woods, and the gardens were blooming in perennial summer.[1] [Footnote 1: REINAUD, _Relation des Voyages Arabes, &c., dans le neuvieme siecle_.

Paris, 1845, tom.ii.p.

129.] _Geographical Position_ .-- Notwithstanding the fact that the Hindus, in their system of the universe, had given prominent importance to Ceylon, their first meridian, "the meridian of Lanka," being supposed to pass over the island, they propounded the most extravagant ideas, both as to its position and extent; expanding it to the proportions of a continent, and at the same time placing it a considerable distance south-east of India.[1] [Footnote 1: For a condensed account of the dimensions and position attributed to Lanka, in the Mythic Astronomy of the Hindus, see REINAUD's _Introduction to Aboulfeda_, sec.iii.p.ccxvii., and his _Memoire sur l'Inde_, p.

342; WILFORD's _Essay on the Sacred Isles of the West_, Asiat.