ce, or platform,
surrounding it, out of which protruded the heads of gigantic elephants,
as if their bodies were supporting the seeming hill, but which I soon
discovered to be no hill, but a vast edifice, shaped like half an
egg-shell, composed of bricks, like the pyramids of Egypt. I went up
the steps leading to the terrace, and entered beneath this wonderful
structure through a low archway. Passages appeared to run through it in
different directions, but the horrible odour of the bats, which had
taken up their abode in those dark recesses for ages, and the fear I
naturally felt of meeting serpents or bears, induced me to refrain from
going further. The wonderful building I have been describing, was, I
discovered, a dagoba--of which there are numbers in Ceylon--built much
with the same object as the pyramids of Egypt, and unsurpassed, except
by them, by any edifices in the world in point of size, and I may add,
in utter want of utility or beauty. They were constructed, likewise, in
all probability, with pain and suffering, amid the groans, and tears,
and sighs of some conquered or enslaved people like the Israelites of
old. Many of them were built from two to three hundred years before the
birth of our Lord.

Hurrying on, and feeling like one of the heroes in an Eastern tale who
suddenly finds himself in an enchanted city, as I gazed from side to
side at the wonderful ruins and remains I met, I reached another dagoba
of far vaster size than the one I had left. It was covered with trees,
and huge masses of brick had been driven out of it by their roots; but
still its stupendous outlines were, it seemed, but little altered from
what they had been originally. I afterwards heard particulars about it.
It had been originally 405 feet from the ground to the summit of the
spire. It was built before the Christian era, and it is even now--most
of the spire having been destroyed--250 feet in height. The radius of
its base is 180 feet, which is, I believe, the same measurement as the
height of the dome from the ground. I was struck by the way in which
these huge structures, commemorative of man's pride and folly, have been
triumphed over by nature. Tall trees grow on their very summits, and
their roots have wrenched and torn asunder the most gigantic and massive
masonry, and hurled it crumbling to the plains below. Sir Emmerson
Tennent, in his delightful work on Ceylon, describes one of these
dagobas, that of Jayta-wan