e thrown into sudden starvation by the
withdrawal of the water. Thus have the nations died out like a fire
for lack of fuel. This cause will account for the decay of the great
cities of Ceylon. The population gone, the wind and the rain would
howl through the deserted dwellings, the white ants would devour the
supporting beams, the elephants would rub their colossal forms against
the already tottering houses, and decay would proceed with a rapidity
unknown in a cooler clime. As the seed germinates in a few hours in a
tropical country, so with equal haste the body of both vegetable and
animal decays when life is extinct. A perpetual and hurrying change is
visible in all things. A few showers, and the surface of the earth is
teeming with verdure; a few days of drought, and the seeds already
formed are falling to the earth, springing in their turn to life at the
approach of moisture. The same rapidity of change is exhibited in
their decay. The heaps of vegetable putridity upon the banks of
rivers, when a swollen torrent has torn the luxuriant plants from the
loosened soil, are but the effects of a few hours' change. The tree
that arrives at maturity in a few years rots in as short a time when
required for durability: thus it is no mystery, that either a house or
a city should shortly fall to decay when the occupant is gone.

In like manner, and with still greater rapidity, is a change effected
in the face of nature. As the flowers usurp the place of weeds under
the care of man, so, when his hand is wanting, a few short weeks bury
them beneath an overwhelming mass of thorns. In one year a jungle will
conceal all signs of recent cultivation. Is it, therefore, a mystery
that Ceylon is covered with such vast tracts of thorny jungle, now that
her inhabitants are gone?

Throughout the world there is a perpetual war between man and nature,
but in no country has the original curse of the earth been carried out
to a fuller extent than in Ceylon: "thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee." This is indeed exemplified when a few months
neglect of once-cultivated land renders it almost impassable, and where
man has vanished from the earth and thorny jungles have covered the
once broad tracts of prosperous cultivation.

A few years will thus produce an almost total ruin throughout a
deserted city. The air of desolation created by a solitude of six
centuries can therefore be easily imagined. There exists, howe