from the
town,--north, east, south, and west. From these main streets radiated
lateral and smaller roadways, evidently occupied by humbler dwellings,
together with an occasional temple or other public building. The ruins
of what is known as the Treasure House of Pollonarua are unusually
interesting, as exhibiting some of the finest and best preserved
bas-reliefs to be found in Ceylon, and as showing also certain marked
peculiarities of skill in architecture which prevailed in
pre-Christian times. On either side of the principal thoroughfares of
the city were handsome and substantial dwellings, palaces, and sacred
temples. The latter, with their gorgeous gilded domes, were dedicated
to various pagan gods. Other spacious buildings and open areas were
devoted to pleasure entertainments for the masses of the people, not
unlike the modern idea of public gardens and outdoor theatres.

Here and there labyrinths of unexplored ruins are entirely hidden by
lofty, broad-limbed trees and a tangle of low, dense shrub, as though
the big city had been originally built in a forest. We pause, and gaze
thoughtfully at the desolation which speaks so emphatically in its
dumb way. It is the language in which the decline and fall of great
empires is written,--monuments of mutability.

"Tully was not so eloquent as thee,
Thou nameless column with the buried base."

It is not to be wondered at that learned European antiquarians make
pilgrimages hither to see with their own eyes what others have
graphically described, and to translate for themselves these
black-letter records of by-gone ages. We met at Pollonarua one
enthusiastic traveler who had neither eyes nor ears for anything else
but that which related to the almost forgotten past. The mouldering
ruins of Ceylon were food and drink to him, with which he gorged
himself to repletion. Each new student of antiquity who comes hither,
being informed of the progress of those who preceded him, takes up the
thread of discovery where they left it, and adds something to illumine
the darkness which enshrouds these sombre ruins.

It could not always have been peaceful in these populous cities of the
past, where strange gods and strange customs prevailed. The
imagination easily depicts dire tragedies and bloody conflicts which
must have drenched their broad avenues with blood. Such has been the
history of the world since the beginning of time.

The best-preserved construction amid all t