Maturin Ballou - The Pearl of India

The carved pillars, fluted, beveled, and spiral columns, mounds of ruined masonry, crumbling flights of stone steps, ornamental fragments of temples, and granite statues skillfully wrought which are scattered in all directions throughout the jungle, in some instances overgrown by tall trees, attest both departed greatness and far-reaching antiquity. Broken bricks, tiles, and sculpture are so knit together by snakelike tree-roots, while shaded by their lofty branches, as to form one solid mass for hundreds of rods together, dotted here and there by simple wild flowers which modestly rear their delicate petals and perfume the air. One represents the tomb of decayed magnificence and oriental luxury, the other is the sweet and simple emblem of Nature undefiled. Thus she covers up the wrinkles of age with blooming vegetation, screening the mouldering architecture of a forgotten race beneath fresh arboreal and floral beauties. There still remain, though partially buried beneath the earth, the suggestive memorials of a prosperous and energetic people, who were once the possessors of this beautiful Indian isle. These decaying monuments are at the same time indisputable evidence of the high civilization which once existed here, and also, sad to realize, of the deterioration of the Singhalese as a people. However gradual may have been the decadence of the race from the proud condition of their ancestors who built the "buried cities," the contrast is so strong to-day as to seem singularly abrupt, notwithstanding the intervening centuries.

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