brought home copious accounts of the island, it occurred to me that the
Chinese travellers during the same period had in all probability been
equally observant and communicative, and that the results of their
experience might be found in Chinese works of the Middle Ages. Acting on
this conjecture, I addressed myself to a Chinese gentleman, WANG TAO
CHUNG, who was then in England; and he, on his return to Shanghae, made
known my wishes to Mr. WYLIE. My anticipations were more than realised
by Mr. WYLIE'S researches. I received in due course, extracts from
upwards of twenty works by Chinese writers, between the fifth and
fifteenth centuries, and the curious and interesting facts contained in
them are embodied in the chapter devoted to that particular subject. In
addition to these, the courtesy of M. STANISLAS JULIEN, the eminent
French Sinologue, has laid me under a similar obligation for access to
unpublished passages relative to Ceylon, in his translation of the great
work of HIOUEN THSANG; in his translation of the great work of HIOUEN
THSANG; descriptive of the Buddhist country of India in the seventh
century.[1]

[Footnote 1: _Memoires sur les Contrees Occidentales_, traduites du
Sanscrit en Chinois, en l'an 648, par M. STANISLAS JULIEN.]

It is with pain that I advert to that portion of the section which
treats of the British rule in Ceylon; in the course of which the
discovery of the private correspondence of the first Governor, Mr.
North, deposited along with the Wellesley Manuscripts, in the British
Museum[1], has thrown an unexpected light over the fearful events of
1803, and the massacre of the English troops then in garrison at Kandy.
Hitherto the honour of the British Government has been unimpeached in
these dark transactions; and the slaughter of the troops has been
uniformly denounced as an evidence of the treacherous and "tiger-like"
spirit of the Kandyan people.[2] But it is not possible now to read the
narrative of these events, as the motives and secret arrangements of the
Governor with the treacherous Minister of the king are disclosed in the
private letters of Mr. North to the Governor-general of India, without
feeling that the sudden destruction of Major Davie's party, however
revolting the remorseless butchery by which it was achieved, may have
been but the consummation of a revenge provoked by the discovery of the
treason concocted by the Adigar in confederacy with the representative
of the Brit