owed out of the rock, are reached by long flights of stone steps.
Each temple is most grotesquely painted with scenes supposed to
represent the past history of the island. In the first of the caves is
the immense statue already spoken of. In the others are those of
ancient kings in heroic size, but not nearly so large as that of
Buddha. On the several walls are rudely-painted tournament scenes,
elephant hunts, and half-effaced battle pictures. Some of the
apartments have iron-grated windows, and were evidently places of
confinement for political prisoners, some time in the far past. An old
Buddhist priest is in charge, grumpy, reticent, and apparently
dissatisfied with himself and the world generally. In the first and
largest of the stone chambers of this huge rock at Dambula, besides
the large recumbent figure of Buddha, there is a statue of Vishnu,
held especially sacred, and before which solemn oaths in litigated
cases were administered, without any other recourse for settlement.
This was when one of the parties agreed to abide by the solemn oath of
the other, to be given in specified form before this statue of Vishnu.
It is a rudely executed figure in granite, as indeed are all the
statues of the period. In the second chamber or temple there are half
a hundred statues of Buddha, besides representatives in stone of
various heathen gods, painted in yellow, blue, and white robes, but
why the multiplicity of Buddhas it would be difficult to divine. In
front of the cave-temples is a flourishing boo-tree, and a small grove
of cocoanut palms which have grown to a great size. As usual,
centuries of age are claimed for the first-named tree. Round about the
plain, among the rude, wild vegetable growth, a peculiar cactus is
seen, a familiar acquaintance, first met with on the plains of Mexico.
Its thick leaves form also its branches, each leaf being attached to
its neighbor endwise, like links of a chain, and being bordered by a
bright yellow ruffle of profuse blossoms. These cave-temples of
Dambula are cut in a solitary mass of rock, rising from the otherwise
level plain to about five hundred feet in height and four times that
in length. This is undoubtedly the most remarkable group of
cave-temples upon the island.

One is vividly reminded by these peculiar and enduring structures of a
similar famous place of Hindu worship cut out of the solid rock on the
island of Elephanta in the outer harbor of Bombay, and also of those
f