uldering capital was founded. The
view afforded on either hand from the apex of the mount embraces the
far-away ocean, and the nearer sea of undulating forests and groves of
palms, clad in the exquisite verdure of the tropics.

Anuradhapura was the largest city in the island, and is confidently
asserted to have contained, in its prime, three million people, over
four hundred thousand of whom were fighting-men. But there were
others, considerable in size and importance, which existed during the
period of its prosperity. The records show that this ancient
metropolis was fifty-two miles in circumference, or sixteen miles
across in a straight line from the north to the south gate, covering
two hundred and fifty-six square miles! What have we in modern times
to equal these ruins in spaciousness? Perhaps some deduction should be
made from such remarkable figures. Of course, the reader will
understand that the area here given was not actually covered by solid
blocks of dwellings. Private residences were generally surrounded by
small but elaborate gardens. There was ample air space about the
temples, palaces, and public buildings, together with large open
commons for military parades, for public baths, for elephant fights,
for political forums, and market-places. Spaciousness and elegance
were the characteristics of this ancient Singhalese metropolis, this
grand city of the plains, where one stands to-day surrounded by
centuries of tangible history. The eye rests upon miles and miles of
broken stone statues of bulls, elephants, sarcophagi, and heavy
capitals of granite columns, many of whose delicate, artistic capitals
and designs are still intact.

All oriental narrative is tinctured with exaggeration, but Sir James
Emerson Tennent, so long officially connected with the island, and
personally familiar with the ruins of Anuradhapura, says no one who
visits the place to-day can doubt that Ceylon, in the zenith of its
prosperity, contained ten times its present population; and as he
wrote this in 1859, when the aggregate was about one million, he
wished to signify that the number of inhabitants, at the period to
which he referred, was probably ten millions. The same writer tells us
that this density of population must have been preserved through many
centuries, in spite of revolutions and invasions, in order to produce
the results, the ruins of which are still visible to all observers.

That the people of Anuradhapura were ear