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, embodied his experiences in a volume entitled "_Ceylon and
its Capabilities_," containing a mass of information, somewhat defective
in arrangement. These and a number of minor publications, chiefly
descriptive of sporting tours in search of elephants and deer, with
incidental notices of the sublime scenery and majestic ruins of the
island, were the only modern works that treated of Ceylon; but no one of
them sufficed to furnish a connected view of the colony at the present
day, contrasting its former state with the condition to which it has
attained under the government of Great Britain.

On arriving in Ceylon and entering on my official functions, this