found to rank only fifth in the mountain scale. The
highest is a thousand feet higher. The maritime district, which runs round
the island for a course of nine hundred miles, fanned by the sea-breezes,
makes, with these varying elevations, a vast cycle of secondary
combinations for altering the temperature and for _adapting_ the weather.
The central region has a separate climate of its own. And an inner belt of
country, neither central nor maritime, which from the sea belt is regarded
as inland, but from the centre is regarded as maritime, composes another
chamber of climates: whilst these again, each individually within its
class, are modified into minor varieties by local circumstances as to wind,
by local accidents of position, and by shifting stages of altitude.

With all this compass of power, however, (obtained from its hills and its
varying scale of hills,) Ceylon has not much of waste ground, in the sense
of being irreclaimable--for of waste ground, in the sense of being
unoccupied, she has an infinity. What are the dimensions of Ceylon? Of all
islands in this world which we know, in respect of size it most resembles
Ireland, being about one-sixth part less. But, for a particular reason, we
choose to compare it with Scotland, which is very little different in
dimensions from Ireland, having (by some hundred or two of square miles) a
trifling advantage in extent. Now, say that Scotland contains a trifle more
than thirty thousand square miles, the relation of Ceylon to Scotland will
become apparent when we mention that this Indian island contains about
twenty-four thousand five hundred of similar square miles. Twenty-four and
a half to thirty--or forty-nine to sixty--there lies the ratio of Ceylon to
Scotland. The ratio in population is not less easily remembered: Scotland
has _now_ (October 1843) hard upon three millions of people: Ceylon, by a
late census, has just three _half_ millions. But strange indeed, where
every thing seems strange, is the arrangement of this Ceylonese territory
and people. Take a peach: what you call the flesh of the peach, the
substance which you eat, is massed orbicularly around a central
stone--often as large as a pretty large strawberry. Now in Ceylon, the
central district, answering to this peach-stone, constitutes a fierce
little Liliputian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries, of
the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and perfectly
distinct by the