Ceylon; an Account of the Island | Page 9

James Emerson Tennent
of Great Britain.
But amidst this wealth of materials as to the island, and its vicissitudes
in early times, there is an absolute dearth of information regarding its

state and progress during more recent periods, and its actual condition
at the present day.
I was made sensible of this want, on the occasion of my nomination, in
1845, to an office in connection with the government of Ceylon. I
found abundant details as to the capture of the maritime provinces from
the Dutch in 1795, in the narrative of Captain PERCIVAL[1], an
officer who had served in the expedition; and the efforts to organise the
first system of administration are amply described by CORDINER[2],
Chaplain to the Forces; by Lord VALENTIA[3], who was then
travelling in the East; and by ANTHONY BERTOLACCI[4], who
acted as auditor-general to the first governor, Mr. North, afterwards
Earl of Guilford. The story of the capture of Kandy in 1815 has been
related by an anonymous eye-witness under the pseudonyme of
PHILALETHES[5], and by MARSHALL in his Historical Sketch of
the conquest.[6] An admirable description of the interior of the island,
as it presented itself some forty years ago, was furnished by Dr.
DAVY[7], a brother of the eminent philosopher, who was employed on
the medical staff in Ceylon, from 1816 till 1820.
[Footnote 1: _An Account of the Island of Ceylon_, &c., by Capt. R.
PERCIVAL, 4to. London, 1805.]
[Footnote 2: _A Description of Ceylon_, &c., by the Rev. JAMES
CORDINER, A.M. 2 vols. 4to. London, 1807.]
[Footnote 3: _Voyages and Travels to India, Ceylon, and the Red Sea_,
by Lord Viscount VALENTIA. 3 vols. 4to. London, 1809.]
[Footnote 4: _A View of the Agricultural, Commercial, and Financial
Interests of Ceylon_, &c., by A. BERTOLACCI, Esq. London, 1817.]
[Footnote 5: A History of Ceylon from the earliest Period to the Year
MDCCCXV, by PHILALETHES, A.M. 4to. Lond. 1817. The author is
believed to have been the Rev. G. Bisset.]
[Footnote 6: HENRY MARSHALL, F.R.S.E., &c. went to Ceylon as
assistant surgeon of the 89th regiment, in 1806, and from 1816 till 1821
was the senior medical officer of the Kandyan provinces.]
[Footnote 7: _An Account of the Interior of Ceylon_, &c., by JOHN
DAVY, M.D. 4to, London, 1821.]
Here the long series of writers is broken, just at the commencement of a
period the most important and interesting in the history of the island.
The mountain zone, which for centuries had been mysteriously hidden

from the Portuguese and Dutch[1] was suddenly opened to British
enterprise in 1815. The lofty region, from behind whose barrier of hills
the kings of Kandy had looked down and defied the arms of three
successive European nations, was at last rendered accessible by the
grandest mountain road in India; and in the north of the island, the ruins
of ancient cities, and the stupendous monuments of an early civilisation,
were discovered in the solitudes of the great central forests. English
merchants embarked in the renowned trade in cinnamon, which we had
wrested from the Dutch; and British capitalists introduced the
cultivation of coffee into the previously inaccessible highlands.
Changes of equal magnitude contributed to alter the social position of
the natives; domestic slavery was extinguished; compulsory labour,
previously exacted from the free races, was abolished; and new laws
under a charter of justice superseded the arbitrary rule of the native
chiefs. In the course of less than half a century, the aspect of the
country became changed, the condition of the people was submitted to
new influences; and the time arrived to note the effects of this civil
revolution.
[Footnote 1: VALENTYN, In his great work on the Dutch possessions
in India, Oud _en Nieuw Oost-Indien_, alludes more than once with
regret to the ignorance in which his countrymen were kept as to the
interior of Ceylon, concerning which their only information was
obtained through fugitives and spies. (Vol. v. ch. ii. p. 35; ch. xv. p.
205.)]
But on searching for books such as I expected to find, recording the
phenomena consequent on these domestic and political events, I was
disappointed to discover that they were few in number and generally
meagre in information. Major FORBES, who in 1826 and for some
years afterwards held a civil appointment in the Kandyan country,
published an interesting account of his observations[1]; and his work
derives value from the attention which the author had paid to the
ancient records of the island, whose contents were then undergoing
investigation by the erudite and indefatigable TURNOUR.[2]
[Footnote 1: _Eleven Years in Ceylon_, &c., by Major FORBES. 2
vols. 8vo. London. 1840.]
[Footnote 2: See Vol. I.
Part III. ch. iii. p. 312.]

In 1843 Mr. BENNETT, a retired civil servant of the colony, who had
studied some branches of its natural history, and especially its
ichthyology,

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