So careful were the inhabitants in husbanding those liquid resources upon which their very existence depended that even the surplus waters of one lake were not allowed to escape unheeded.

Channels were cut, connecting a chain of tanks of slightly varying elevations, over an extent of sixty or seventy miles of apparently flat country, and the overflow of one tank was thus conducted in succession from lake to lake, until they all attained the desired level.
In this manner was the greater portion of Ceylon kept in the highest state of cultivation.

From the north to the south the island was thickly peopled, and the only portions which then remained in the hands of nature were those which are now seen in the state of primeval forest.
Well may Ceylon in those times have deserved the name of the "Paradise of the East." The beauties which nature has showered upon the land were heightened by cultivation; the forest-capped mountains rose from a waving sea of green; the valleys teemed with wealth; no thorny jungles gave a barren terminable prospect, but the golden tints of ripening crops spread to the horizon.

Temples stood upon the hill-tops; cities were studded over the land, their lofty dagobas and palaces reflected on the glassy surface of the lakes, from which their millions of inhabitants derived their food, their wealth and their very life.
The remains of these cities sufficiently attest the former amount of population and the comparative civilization which existed at that remote era among the progenitors of the present degraded race of barbarians.

The ruins of "Anaradupoora," which cover two hundred and fifty-six square miles of ground, are all that remain of the noble city which stood within its walls in a square of sixteen miles.