y erected
to defend the pass to the main water-course from the low country.

This gives us a faint clue to the probable cause of the disappearance
of the nation.

In time of war or intestine commotion, the water may have been cut off
from the low country, and the exterminating effects of famine may have
laid the whole land desolate. It is, therefore, no longer a matter of
astonishment that the present plain of Newera Ellia should have
received its appellation of the "Royal Plain." In those days there was
no very secure tenure to the throne, and by force alone could a king
retain it. The more bloodthirsty and barbarous the tyrant, the more
was he dreaded by the awe-stricken and trembling population. The power
of such a weapon of annihilation as the command of the waters may be
easily conceived as it invested a king with almost divine authority in
the eyes of his subjects.

Now there is little doubt that the existence of precious gems at Newera
Ellia may have been accidentally discovered in digging the numerous
water-courses in the vicinity; there is, however, no doubt that at some
former period the east end of the plain, called the "Vale of Rubies,"
constituted the royal "diggings." That the king of Kandy did not reside
at Newera Ellia there is little wonder, as a monarch delighting in a
temperature of 85 Fahrenheit would have regarded the climate of a mean
temperature of 60 Fahrenheit as we should that of Nova Zembla.

We may take it for granted, therefore, that when the king came to
Newera Ellia his visit had some object, and we presume that he came to
look at the condition of his water-courses and to superintend the
digging for precious stones; in the same manner that Ceylon governors
of past years visited Arippo during the pearlfishing.

The "diggings" of the kings of Kandy must have been conducted on a most
extensive scale. Not only has the Vale of Rubies been regularly turned
up for many acres, but all the numerous plains in the vicinity are full
of pits, some of very large size and of a depth varying from three to
seventeen feet. The Newera Ellia Plain, the Moonstone Plain, the
Kondapalle Plain, the Elk Plains, the Totapella Plains, the Horton
Plains, the Bopatalava Plains, the Augara Plains (translated "the
Diggings"), and many others extending over a surface of thirty miles,
are all more or less studded by deep pits formed by the ancient
searchers for gems, which in those days were a royal monopoly.