File:In old Ceylon (1908) (14780852864).jpg

Identifier: inoldceylon00farr (find matches)
Title: In old Ceylon
Year: 1908 (1900s)
Authors: Farrer, Reginald John, 1880-1920
Subjects: Sri Lanka -- Description and travel
Publisher: London : E. Arnold
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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r as eye cansee, stretches the indistinguishable calm ocean of theforest. Away to the south, in range after range of jaggedlovely outlines, rise the blue Kandyan Mountains. Dam-bullas humped black dome of rock appears far remote, likea whales back rising from the sea. And the jungle, awaytowards the sunset, is all of a deep emerald green, solidand luminous in the red light. Unbroken, round the base ofSigiri it flows, and, from this height, the eye can discernbrilliant patches of culture, and the ineffaceable traces,even in the wild woodland, of fields and territories onceworked in the days of the King. And then, out towards the east, the jungle stretchesunbroken, far and far, until a flash of silver shows youMinneri Water. And away beyond that, again, a smearof duller green indicates the lotus-packed choked expanseot Topavewa, along whose shore lie lost in jungle the bonesof the dead royal city of Polonnarua. From Sigiri, indeed,one commands all Lankas history; for, turning northward,
Text Appearing After Image:
Looking back, from the long gallery of Sigiri, to the Kandyan Mountains. SIGIRI ROCK 159 the eye is stayed, in the distance, by a high ridge of pin-nacled mountain. This is Ritigala, the Gleaming Rock,sacred range all jostled with ruins, beneath whose slope itwas that Kasyapa at last met Mogallana his brother, andpaid the price of his glory. And there, just above thelast spur of Ritigala, there twinkles and wavers in theremotest profundities of the blue horizon beyond, a tinypoint of blue, so faint, so microscopic, as hardly even tobe a point, but rather a mere speck, scarcely perceptible.Yet, as you look, the thing becomes inevitable—no emptyfancy. Far out in that indefinite plain there is a solidsomething, visible even across all these expanding miles.And that something is the greatest of all the great dagabas,Abhayagiriya Dagaba, keeping watch and ward over thegreatest of all sacred cities, the Sacred City of Anuradha-pura. Ghostly in the gloaming is the citadel of Sigiri Rock,an

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