[16] See Dr Robison on _Rivers_.

[17] Deut. xxxiv. 6.

If, however as to Paradise in connexion with Ceylon we are forced to say
"_No_," if as to Taprobane in connexion with Ceylon we say both "_Yes_"
and "_No_,"--not the less we come back with a reiterated "_Yes, yes, yes_,"
upon Ceylon as the crest and eagle's plume of the Indies, as the priceless
pearl, the ruby without a flaw, and (once again we say it) as the Pandora
of oriental islands.

Yet ends so glorious imply means of corresponding power; and advantages so
comprehensive cannot be sustained unless by a machinery proportionately
elaborate. Part of this machinery lies in the miraculous climate of Ceylon.
Climate? She has all climates. Like some rare human favourite of nature,
scattered at intervals along the line of a thousand years, who has been
gifted so variously as to seem

"Not one, but all mankind's epitome,"

Ceylon, in order that she might become capable of products without end,
has been made an abstract of the whole earth, and fitted up as a
_panorganon_ for modulating through the whole diatonic scale of climates.
This is accomplished in part by her mountains. No island has mountains so
high. It was the hideous oversight of a famous infidel in the last century,
that, in supposing an Eastern prince _of necessity_ to deny frost and ice
as things impossible to _his_ experience, he betrayed too palpably his own
non-acquaintance with the grand economies of nature. To make acquaintance
with cold, and the products of cold, obviously he fancied it requisite to
travel northwards; to taste of polar power, he supposed it indispensable
to have advanced towards the pole. Narrow was the knowledge in those days,
when a master in Israel might have leave to err thus grossly. Whereas, at
present, few are the people, amongst those not openly making profession of
illiteracy, who do not know that a sultan of the tropics--ay, though his
throne were screwed down by exquisite geometry to the very centre of the
equator--might as surely become familiar with winter by ascending three
miles in altitude, as by travelling three thousand horizontally. In that
way of ascent, it is that Ceylon has her regions of winter and her Arctic
districts. She has her Alps, and she has her alpine tracts for supporting
human life and useful vegetation. Adam's Peak, which of itself is more
than seven thousand feet high, (and by repute the highest range within her
shores,) has been