absence of local knowledge entailed frequent inconvenience. In my tours
throughout the interior, I found ancient monuments, apparently defying
decay, of which no one could tell the date or the founder; and temples
and cities in ruins, whose destroyers were equally unknown. There were
vast structures of public utility, on which the prosperity of the
country had at one time been dependent; artificial lakes, with their
conduits and canals for irrigation; the condition of which rendered it
interesting to ascertain the period of their formation, and the causes
of their abandonment; but to every inquiry of this nature, there was the
same unvarying reply: that information regarding them might possibly be
found in the _Mahawanso_ or in some other of the native chronicles; but
that few had ever read them, and none had succeeded in reproducing them
for popular instruction.

A still more serious embarrassment arose from the want of authorities to
throw light on questions that were sometimes the subject of
administrative deliberation: there were native customs which no
available materials sufficed to illustrate; and native claims, often
serious in their importance, the consideration of which was obstructed
by a similar dearth of authentic data. With a view to executive
measures, I was frequently desirous of consulting the records of the two
European governments, under which the island had been administered for
300 years before the arrival of the British; their experience might have
served as a guide, and even their failures would have pointed out errors
to be avoided; but here, again, I had to encounter disappointment: in
answer to my inquiries, I was assured that _the records, both of the
Portuguese and Dutch, had long since disappeared from the archives of
the colony_.

Their loss, whilst in our custody, is the more remarkable, considering