I slept for an hour or more under the bo-tree, held sacred by the worshippers of Buddah, in front of those strange, fantastic, and gigantic remains of a bygone age and people. When I awoke, there was Solon sitting exactly in the attitude in which I had seen him when I went to sleep. The moment I opened my eyes, he began to lick my face and hands, and to show every sign of satisfaction.
“It is your turn to sleep now, old Solon,” said I, patting him on the head, and pressing him down on the ground.
He seemed to understand me, and giving a couple of turns round, he coiled himself up, and in a moment was fast asleep. I do not think that he had been asleep ten minutes before he jumped up, wagged his tail, and ran forward, as much as to say—
“I am all ready now, master, to begin our journey; and it is high time, I am sure, to be off.”
I thought so likewise, but in what direction to go I could not tell, nor did Solon seem to know much more about it.
Anxious, however, as I was to rejoin Nowell, I scarcely liked to leave the extraordinary place in which I found myself without exploring the vast ruins by which I was surrounded. Daylight showed me that they extended to an immense distance; the whole surface of the ground, as far as my eye could reach, was covered with fragments of an ancient city; the ground in many spots was literally coloured red by the masses of brick crumbled into dust, while around I saw scattered in vast quantities large and massive columns, which once must have formed a support to innumerable temples, palaces, and public buildings of various sorts. Many parts of the ruins were completely overgrown with jungle. I was forcing my way through it, when I saw at a little distance, partly concealed by the foliage, a large elephant. I thought that he appeared to be standing listening to ascertain in what direction I was coming.
“An undoubted rogue,” I said to myself, examining my rifle to ascertain that the caps were on, and to be ready to fire should he attack me. I signed to Solon to keep close at my heels, and approached the monster cautiously. It was just the place where I might expect to meet with a perfect rogue. I crept on slowly. I was surprised to find that Solon took no notice of the elephant, though he kept, as I ordered him, close behind me. The elephant did not move. I got nearer and nearer. There he stood, ready, it seemed, to make a rush at me. I expected to see him lift up his trunk and commence the assault; but he did not make the slightest movement that I could perceive. To be sure he was considerably hidden by the foliage. Perhaps he might be asleep. Elephants do sleep standing. That I knew. He might have been stamping with his feet, or cocking up his ears, for very frequently, as I advanced, he was almost entirely concealed by the thick bushes. I had got within twenty paces of the monster, when, obtaining a clearer view than before, I was struck by the unusual colour of the hide. Still nearer I got. Surely an ear was wanting, and the trunk was of a very odd shape. In another minute I was indulging in a hearty fit of laughter, as I found myself standing close under the elephant. No wonder it did not move, nor had it for many hundred years, for it was carved, though roughly, out of a mass of stone; there it stood—a beast of great size and excellent workmanship; and further on were fragments of other elephants and bulls, as also of pedestals and stone sarcophagi, covered with the most grotesque human figures, and many other curious designs.
Wandering on for some distance, and passing all sorts of ruins, and figures, and pillars, I came to what I took to be a lofty circular hill covered with shrubs. On getting nearer, I found a terrace, or platform, surrounding it, out of which protruded the heads of gigantic elephants, as if their bodies were supporting the seeming hill, but which I soon discovered to be no hill, but a vast edifice, shaped like half an egg-shell, composed of bricks, like the pyramids of Egypt. I went up the steps leading to the terrace, and entered beneath this wonderful structure through a low archway. Passages appeared to run through it in different directions, but the horrible odour of the bats, which had taken up their abode in those dark recesses for ages, and the fear I naturally felt of meeting serpents or bears, induced me to refrain from going further. The wonderful building I have been describing, was, I discovered, a dagoba—of which there are numbers in Ceylon—built much with the same object as the pyramids of Egypt, and unsurpassed, except by them, by any edifices in the world in point of size, and I may add, in utter want of utility or beauty. They were constructed, likewise, in all probability, with pain and suffering, amid the groans, and tears, and sighs of some conquered or enslaved people like the Israelites of old. Many of them were built from two to three hundred years before the birth of our Lord.
Hurrying on, and feeling like one of the heroes in an Eastern tale who suddenly finds himself in an enchanted city, as I gazed from side to side at the wonderful ruins and remains I met, I reached another dagoba of far vaster size than the one I had left. It was covered with trees, and huge masses of brick had been driven out of it by their roots; but still its stupendous outlines were, it seemed, but little altered from what they had been originally. I afterwards heard particulars about it. It had been originally 405 feet from the ground to the summit of the spire. It was built before the Christian era, and it is even now—most of the spire having been destroyed—250 feet in height. The radius of its base is 180 feet, which is, I believe, the same measurement as the height of the dome from the ground. I was struck by the way in which these huge structures, commemorative of man’s pride and folly, have been triumphed over by nature. Tall trees grow on their very summits, and their roots have wrenched and torn asunder the most gigantic and massive masonry, and hurled it crumbling to the plains below. Sir Emmerson Tennent, in his delightful work on Ceylon, describes one of these dagobas, that of Jayta-wana-rama, erected by Mahasen, A.D. 330:—
“It still rises to the height of 249 feet, and is clothed to the summit with trees of the largest size. The solid mass of masonry in this vast mound is prodigious. Its diameter is 360 feet, and its present height (including the pedestal and spire) 249 feet, so that the contents of the semicircular dome of brickwork and the platform of stone, 720 feet square, and 14 feet high, exceed 20,000,000 of cubical feet. Even with the facilities which modern invention supplies for economising labour, the building of such a mass would at present occupy five hundred bricklayers from six to seven years, and would involve an expenditure of at least a million sterling. The materials are sufficient to raise eight thousand houses, each with 20 feet frontage, and these would form thirty streets half a mile in length. They would construct a town the size of Ipswich or Coventry; they would line an ordinary railway tunnel 20 miles long, or form a wall one foot in thickness and 10 feet in height, reaching from London to Edinburgh. In the infancy of art, the origin of these ‘high places’ may possibly have been the ambition to expand the earthen mound which covered the ashes of the dead into the dimensions of the eternal hills—the earliest altars for adoration and sacrifice. And in their present condition, alike defiant of decay and triumphant over time, they are invested with singular interest as monuments of an age before the people of the East had learned to hollow caves in rocks, or elevate temples on the solid earth.” Having somewhat satisfied my curiosity, I felt that I should not delay a moment longer in trying to find my way back to my friends. How this was to be accomplished I could not tell. I tried to get Solon to lead the way, but though he wagged his tail and looked very wise when I spoke to him, running on ahead a short distance, he always came back again to my heels, and evidently did not know more about the matter than I did. The affair was now growing somewhat serious. Nowell would, I had no doubt, be wandering about searching for me, and Mr Fordyce could not fail to be excessively anxious at our not returning. To start off again through the forest in the expectation of falling in with them seemed worse than useless. We might be wandering about day after day, searching for each other in vain, till all our ammunition was expended, and might easily then fall victims to rogue elephants, or bears, or other wild beasts. The contemplation of such a catastrophe was not pleasant; but still, what was to be done? I asked the question of myself over and over again, I examined my ammunition, and found that I had eight bullets and a dozen or more charges of small shot, with an ample supply of powder; so that, if I did not throw my shots away, I might hope to supply myself with food for several days. To stand still would never do. I believed my friends were to the south of me, so I was pushing on in that direction, when suddenly I came upon an open space free from jungle, with a beautiful expanse of water, blue and glittering in the sunshine, spread out before me. Tall trees fringed the greater part of its banks; but here and there columns, and domes, and carved arches, and huge statues appeared among them, their strange and fantastic images reflected in the mirror-like surface. Beyond them, towering up into the clear sky, rose at different distances several of those prodigious structures, the dagobas, which I have described. The whole scene, as I beheld it in the light of that clear atmosphere, under the blaze of the noonday sun, was most enchanting, while I sat down to shekel myself from the heat beneath the shade of a mass of ruins, with wide-spreading branches extending from their walls, which formed a complete roof over my head. The site of the ruined city into which I had wandered must thus, I discovered, be of many miles in extent, and gave me an idea of the power and magnificence of the monarchs who once possessed the territory. While England was scantily inhabited by tribes of painted barbarians, here existed a people who had attained a high state of civilisation, living in richly adorned palaces, having magnificent temples, carving statues of gigantic proportions, erecting tombs and monuments equal in height to mountains, and forming reservoirs of lake-like extent. And now, how great the contrast! Those people were then, and have ever since remained, sunk in the grossest superstition; while the British, blessed with the light of gospel truth, have risen to that height of civilisation which has given us the complete mastership over the now fallen race which inhabit the country. I do not know that I said this in exactly these terms, but such was the tenor of the thoughts which passed through my mind.