ristian
year 1522 A.D., in the month of April, a ship from Portugal arrived at
Colombo, and information was brought to the king, that there were in the
harbour a race of very white and beautiful people, who wear boots and
hats of iron, and never stop in one place. They eat a sort of white
stone, and drink blood; and if they get a fish they give two or three
_ride_ in gold for it; and besides, they have guns with a noise louder
than thunder, and a ball shot from one of them, after traversing a
league, will break a castle of marble."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Rajavali_, Upham's version, p. 278.]

Before proceeding to recount the intercourse of the islanders with these
civilised visitors, and the grave results which followed, it will be
well to cast a glance over the condition of the people during the period
which preceded, and to cull from the native historians such notices of
their domestic and social position as occur in passages intended by the
Singhalese annalists to chronicle only those events which influenced the
national worship, or the exploits of those royal personages, who earned
immortality by their protection of Buddhism.

PART IV.

* * * * *

SCIENCES AND SOCIAL ARTS

OF

THE ANCIENT SINGHALESE.

CHAPTER I

POPULATION.--CASTE.--SLAVERY AND RAJA-KARIYA.

POPULATION.--In no single instance do the chronicles of Ceylon mention
the precise amount of the population of the island, at any particular
period; but there is a sufficiency of evidence, both historical and
physical, to show that it must have been prodigious and dense,
especially in the reigns of the more prosperous kings. Whatever limits
to the increase of man artificial wants may interpose in a civilised
state and in ordinary climates are unknown in a tropical region, where
clothing is an encumbrance, the smallest shelter a home, and sustenance
supplied by the bounty of the soil in almost spontaneous abundance.
Under such propitious circumstances, in the midst of a profusion of
fruit-bearing-trees, and in a country replenished by a teeming harvest
twice, at least, in each year, with the least possible application of
labour; it may readily be conceived that the number of the people will
be adjusted mainly, if not entirely, by the extent of arable land.

The emotion of the traveller of the present time, as day after day he
traverses the northern portions of the island, and penetrates the deep
forests of the