nd condense the vapours
with which they are charged, thus ensuring to those regions a plentiful
supply of rain. Hence the harvests in those portions of the island are
regulated by the two monsoons, the _yalla_ in May and the _maha_ in
November; and seed-time is adjusted so as to take advantage of the
copious showers which fall at those periods.

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I. Part I. ch. ii p. 67.]

But in the northern portions of Ceylon, owing to the absence of
mountains, this natural resource cannot be relied on. The winds in both
monsoons traverse the island without parting with a sufficiency of
moisture; droughts are of frequent occurrence and of long continuance;
and vegetation in the low and scarcely undulated plains is mainly
dependent on dews and whatever damp is distributed by the steady
sea-breeze. In some places the sandy soil rests upon beds of madrepore
and coral rock, through which the scanty rain percolates too quickly to
refresh the soil; and the husbandman is entirely dependent upon wells
and village tanks for the means of irrigation.

In a region exposed to such vicissitudes the risk would have been
imminent and incessant, had the population been obliged to rely on
supplies of dry grain alone, the growth of which must necessarily have
been precarious, owing to the possible failure or deficiency of the
rains. Hence frequent famines would have been inevitable in those
seasons of prolonged dryness and scorching heat, when "the sky becomes
as brass and the earth as iron."

What an unspeakable blessing that against such, calamities a security
should have been found by the introduction of a grain calculated to
germinate under water; and that a perennial supply of the latter, not
only adequate for all ordinary purposes, but sufficient to guard against
extraordinary emergencies of the seasons, should have been provided by
the ingenuity of the people, aided by the bounteous care of their
sovereigns. It is no matter of surprise that the kings who devoted their
treasures and their personal energies to the formation of tanks and
canals have entitled their memory to traditional veneration, as
benefactors of their race and country. In striking contrast, it is the
pithy remark of the author of the _Rajavali_, mourning over the
extinction of the Great Dynasty and the decline of the country, that
"_because the fertility of the land was decreased_ the kings who
followed were no longer of such consequence as those who went