nd rises
from the sea, its lofty mountains covered by luxuriant forests, and its
shores, till they meet the ripple of the waves, bright with the foliage
of perpetual spring.

The Brahmans designated it by the epithet of "the resplendent," and in
their dreamy rhapsodies extolled it as the region of mystery and
sublimity[1]; the Buddhist poets gracefully apostrophised it as "a pearl
upon the brow of India;" the Chinese knew it as the "island of jewels;"
the Greeks as the "land of the hyacinth and the ruby;" the Mahometans,
in the intensity of their delight, assigned it to the exiled parents of
mankind as a new elysium to console them for the loss of Paradise; and
the early navigators of Europe, as they returned dazzled with its gems,
and laden with its costly spices, propagated the fable that far to
seaward the very breeze that blew from it was redolent of perfume.[2] In
later and less imaginative times, Ceylon has still maintained the renown
of its attractions, and exhibits in all its varied charms "the highest
conceivable development of Indian nature."[3]

[Footnote 1: "Ils en ont fait une espece de paradis, et se sont imagine
que des etres d'une nature angelique les habitaient."--ALBYROUNI, Traite
des Eres, &c.; REINAUD, Geographie d'Aboulfeda, Introd. sec. iii. p.
ccxxiv. The renown of Ceylon as it reached Europe in the seventeenth
century is thus summed up by PURCHAS in _His Pilgrimage_, b.v.c. 18, p.
550:--"The heauens with their dewes, the ayre with a pleasant
holesomenesse and fragrant freshnesse, the waters in their many riuers
and fountaines, the earth diuersified in aspiring hills, lowly vales,
equall and indifferent plaines, filled in her inward chambers with
mettalls and jewells, in her outward court and vpper face stored with
whole woods of the best cinnamons that the sunne seeth; besides fruits,
oranges, lemons, &c. surmounting those of Spaine; fowles and beasts,
both tame and wilde (among which is their elephant honoured by a
naturall acknowledgement of excellence of all other elephants in the
world). These all have conspired and joined in common league to present
unto Zeilan the chiefe of worldly treasures and pleasures, with a long
and healthfull life in the inhabitants to enjoye them. No marvell, then,
if sense and sensualitie have heere stumbled on a paradise."]

[Footnote 2: The fable of the "spicy breezes" said to blow from Arabia
and India, is as old as Ctesias; and is eagerly repeated by Pliny? l