Kornegalle, or Kurunai-galle, was one of the ancient capitals of the island, and the residence of its kings from A.D. 1319 to 1347.[1] The dwelling-house of the principal civil officer in charge of the district now occupies the site of the former palace, and the ground is strewn with fragments of columns and carved stones, the remnants of the royal buildings.  The modern town consists of the bungalows of the European officials, each surrounded with its own garden; two or three streets inhabited by Dutch descendants and by Moors; and a native bazaar, with the ordinary array of rice and curry stuffs and cooking chattees of brass or burnt clay.

[Footnote 1:  See SIR J. EMERSON TENNENT’S Ceylon, Vol.  I. Pt.  III. ch. xii. p. 415.]

The charm of the village is the unusual beauty of its position.  It rests within the shade of an enormous rock of gneiss upwards of 600 feet in height, nearly denuded of verdure, and so rounded and worn by time that it has acquired the form of a couchant elephant, from which it derives its name of AEtagalla, the Rock of the Tusker.[1] But AEtagalla is only the last eminence in a range of similarly-formed rocky mountains, which here terminate abruptly; and, which from the fantastic shapes into which their gigantic outlines have been wrought by the action of the atmosphere, are called by the names of the Tortoise Rock, the Eel Rock, and the Rock of the Tusked Elephant.  So impressed are the Singhalese by the aspect of these stupendous masses that in ancient grants lands are conveyed in perpetuity, or “so long as the sun and the moon, so long as AEtagalla and Andagalla shall endure."[2]

[Footnote 1:  Another enormous mass of gneiss is called the Kuruminiagalla, or the Beetle-rock, from its resemblance in shape to the back of that insect, and hence is said to have been derived the name of the town, Kuruna-galle or Kornegalle.]

[Footnote 2:  FORBES quotes a Tamil conveyance of land, the purchaser of which is to “possess and enjoy it as long as the sun and the moon, the earth and its vegetables, the mountains and the River Cauvery exist.”—­Oriental Memoirs, vol. ii. chap. ii.  It will not fail to be observed, that the same figure was employed in Hebrew literature as a type of duration—­” They shall fear thee, so long as the sun and moon endure; throughout all generations.”—­Psalm lxxii. 5, 17.]

Kornegalle is the resort of Buddhists from the remotest parts of the island, who come to visit an ancient temple on the summit of the great rock, to which access is had from the valley below by means of steep paths and steps hewn out of the solid stone.  Here the chief object of veneration is a copy of the sacred footstep hollowed in the granite, similar to that which confers sanctity on Adam’s Peak, the towering apex of which, about forty miles distant, the pilgrims can discern from AEtagalla.