The strength of these slender plants is so extreme, that the natives employ them with striking success in the formation of bridges across the water-courses and ravines. One which crossed the falls of the Mahawelliganga, in the Kotmahe range of hills, was constructed with the scientific precision of an engineer's work. It was entirely composed of the plant, called by the natives the "Waywel," its extremities fastened to living trees, on the opposite sides of the ravine through which a furious and otherwise impassable mountain torrent thundered and fell from rock to rock with a descent of nearly 100 feet. The flooring of this aerial bridge consisted of short splints of wood, laid transversely, and bound in their places by thin strips of the waywel itself. The whole structure vibrated and swayed with fearful ease, but the coolies traversed it though heavily laden; and the European, between whose estate and the high road it lay, rode over it daily without dismounting.
Another class of trees which excites the astonishment of an European, are those whose stems are protected, as high as cattle can reach, by thorns, which in the jungle attain a growth and size quite surprising. One species of palm[1], the Caryota horrida, often rises to a height of fifty feet, and has a coating of thorns for about six or eight feet from the ground, each about an inch in length, and so densely covering the stem that the bark is barely visible.
1: This palm I have called a Caryota on the authority of Dr. GARDNER, and of MOON'S Catalogue; but I have been informed by Dr. HOOKER and Mr. THWAITES that it is an Areca. The natives identify it with the Caryota, and call it the "katu-kittul."
A climbing plant, the "Kudu-miris" of the Singhalese[1], very common in the hill jungles, with a diameter of three or four inches, is thickly studded with knobs about half an inch high, and from the extremity of each a thorn protrudes, as large and sharp as the bill of a sparrow-hawk. It has been the custom of the Singhalese from time immemorial, to employ the thorny trees of their forests in the construction of defences against their enemies. The Mahawanso relates, that in the civil wars, in the reign of Prakrama-bahu in the twelfth century, the inhabitants of the southern portion of the island intrenched themselves against his forces behind moats filled with thorns.[2] And at an earlier period, during the contest of Dutugaimunu with Elala, the same authority states, that a town which he was about to attack was "surrounded on all sides by the thorny Dadambo creeper (probably Toddalia aculeata), within which was a triple hue of fortifications, with one gate of difficult access."[3]
1: Toddalia aculeata.
2: Mahawanso ch. lxxiv.
3: Mahawanso ch. xxv.
During the existence of the Kandyan kingdom as an independent state, before its conquest by the British, the frontier forests were so thickened and defended by dense plantations of these thorny palms and climbers at different points, as to exhibit a natural fortification impregnable to the feeble tribes on the other side, and at each pass which led to the level country, movable gates, formed of the same formidable thorny beams, were suspended as an ample security against the incursions of the naked and timid lowlanders.[1]
1: The kings of Kandy maintained a regulation "that no one; on pain of death, should presume to cut a road through the forest wider than was sufficient for one person to pass."—WOLF'S Life and Adventures, p. 308.
The pasture grounds throughout the vicinity of Jaffna abound in a low shrub called the Buffalo-thorn[1], the black twigs of which are beset at every joint by a pair of thorns, set opposite each other like the horns of an ox, as sharp as a needle, from two to three inches in length, and thicker at the base than the stem they grow on.