consecutive historical data for
twenty-four centuries back, though, as in most oriental countries, the
records of their past combine truth and fable almost indiscriminately,
so that it is often difficult to distinguish one from the other. These
Eastern writers had a royal mode of assertion, much more impressive
than convincing; as regards the general fidelity of these annals,
however, there is no reasonable doubt, after allowing for what may be
termed poetical license of expression. We may well ask ourselves how
many lands can, like Ceylon, tell so much of their past history in
authentic records verified by enduring monuments. As is well known, we
in America go back only about four centuries before the trail of
history is lost. To be sure, conjecture is abundant enough, but
conjecture is not history.

Compared with the probable age of the globe, how quickly history fades
into fable! Agassiz thought this to be the oldest country of which we
have any reliable knowledge. The Western mound builders were
undoubtedly a distinctive race, yet who can tell their story? The
mysteries of Yucatan are unsolved. There was a civilization once
existing in Peru whose history is to us a blank. Of the origin of the
Sphinx, older than the Pyramids, what do we really know? On Easter
Island, in the South Pacific, are indestructible evidences of an
ancient people, who possessed a written language so old that no one
can decipher its admirably graven characters. Where did that island
come from, and what became of its people? Were they and their country
submerged, like another Atlantis, and is this island the apex of a
mountain range left above the devouring ocean to tell the tale? This
is not a wild supposition. It has been suggested and declared possible
by more than one astute and scholarly writer upon physical geography.
As to antiquity, the monuments of Egypt enable us to trace back the
history of civilized man only six thousand years, though all
intelligent archaeologists know that the earth must have been inhabited
by human beings an infinite number of years prior to that period.
Philology and geology are sufficient to prove this.

Singhalese annals record in detail the reign of one hundred and sixty
sovereigns during a period extending from the conquest of the island,
B. C. 543, by Wijaya, a prince from northern India, to the deposition
of Wikram Raja Sinka by the English in 1815. This was the last king of
Kandy, the then native capita