With regard to wild beasts, in no part of the world are elephants finer or more numerous; tigers are very formidable and destructive. There are savage wild boars, buffaloes, and elks of great size, besides other sorts of deer; snakes are numerous, and some of them of great size, and wild peacocks and other game are to be found in abundance in the higher country. The aborigines of Ceylon are supposed to have been of the same race as the people of Dekkan. They were demon and snake worshippers, and very barbarous. In the sixth century B.C. they were conquered by Wijayo, a native of India, who first introduced Buddhism among them, which religion was afterwards established by his successors. From the vast ruins and other gigantic works which are found scattered over the country, there can be no doubt that Ceylon was for long inhabited by a civilised and highly intelligent people. Marco Polo visited it in the thirteenth century, and described it as the finest country in the world. In A.D. 1505 the Portuguese, having doubled the Cape of Good Hope, arrived there, and found the country in a declining state, owing to intestine wars and the invasion of foreign enemies. The Singhalese king besought their assistance, which having afforded, they began in 1518 to fortify themselves in Colombo and Galle, and finally possessed themselves of the greater part of the sea-coast, shutting up the King of Kandy in the interior. In 1632 the Dutch, uniting with the King of Kandy, in their turn drove them out and held the country, though engaged in constant hostilities with the natives till 1796, when the British (Holland having fallen into the power of France) took possession of Colombo, Galle, Trincomalee, and other towns on the coast. We, however, became involved, as had our predecessors, in hostilities with the King of Kandy, and this led to the capture of his capital in 1803. We, however, allowed the king to retain nominal possession of his capital till 1815, when, in consequence of his repeated acts of cruelty, the chiefs invited us to depose him, and the whole island has ever since been under British sway, except during a serious insurrection which lasted from 1817 to 1819, and various other less important attempts at insurrection which have happily without difficulty been quelled.