w
green chilies, onions in slices fried, and a little lime-juice, salt,
black pepper and mushroom ketchup, and--in fact, there is no rise
thinking of it, as the soup is not to be had again. The fire crackled
and blazed as the logs were heaped upon it as night grew near, and lit
up all the nooks and corners of the old cave. Three beds in a row
contained three sleepy mortals. The hounds snored and growled, and
then snored again. The servants jabbered, chewed betel, spit, then
jabbered a little more, and at last everything and everybody was fast
asleep within the cave.

The next morning we had an early breakfast and started, the village
people marching off in good spirits with the loads. I was now en route
for Bertram's patinas, which lay exactly over the mountain on the
opposite side of the river. This being perpendicular, I was obliged to
make a great circuit by keeping the old Newera Ellia path along the
river for two or three miles, and then, turning off at right angles, I
knew an old native trace over the ridge. Altogether, it was a round of
about six miles, although the patinas were not a mile from the cave in
a straight line.

The path in fact terminates upon the high peak, exactly opposite the
cave, looking down upon my hunting-ground of the day before, and on the
other side the ridge lie Bertram's patinas.

The extreme point of the ridge which I had now gained forms one end of
a horse-shoe or amphitheatre; the other extremity is formed by a high
mountain exactly opposite at about two miles' distance. The bend of
the horse-shoe forms a circuit of about six miles, the rim of which is
a wall of precipices and steep patina mountains, which are about six or
seven hundred feet above the basin or the bottom of the amphitheatre.
The tops of the mountains are covered with good open forest, and
ribbon-like strips descend to the base. Now the base forms an uneven
shelf of great extent, about two thousand feet above the villages. This
shelf or valley appears to have suffered at some remote period from a
terrible inundation. Landslips of great size and innumerable deep
gorges and ravines furrow the bottom of the basin, until at length a
principal fissure carries away the united streams to the paddy-fields
below.

The cause of this inundation is plain enough. The basin has been the
receptacle for the drainage of an extensive surface of mountain. This
drainage has been effected by innumerable small torrents, whic