Still we climbed.
"The bridle-track now skirted a torrent, now wound dizzily round the edge of a stupendous cliff, and again plunged into obscurity.
Here and there the ruins of some ancient and abandoned shrine confronted us, its graceful columns entwined and matted with vegetation; or, again, where the forest broke off and allowed our eyes to sweep over the far prospect, the guides would point to the place where stood, hardly to be descried, the relics of some dead city, desolate and shrined in desolation.

Even I, who knew nothing of the past glories of Ceylon, could not help being possessed with melancholy thoughts as I passed now a mass of deserted masonry, now a broken column, the sole witnesses of generations gone for ever.
Some were very richly carved, but Nature's tracery was rapidly blotting out the handiwork of man, the twining convolvulus usurping the glories of the patient chisel.

Still up we climbed, where hosts of chattering monkeys swung from branch to branch, or poised screaming overhead, or a frightened serpent rose with hissing mouth, and then glided in a flash back through the undergrowth.

One, that seemed to me of a pure silver-white, started almost from under my feet, and darted away before I could recover myself.

We hardly spoke; the vastness of Nature hushed our tongues.