A still more serious embarrassment arose from the want of authorities to throw light on questions that were sometimes the subject of administrative deliberation:  there were native customs which no available materials sufficed to illustrate; and native claims, often serious in their importance, the consideration of which was obstructed by a similar dearth of authentic data.  With a view to executive measures, I was frequently desirous of consulting the records of the two European governments, under which the island had been administered for 300 years before the arrival of the British; their experience might have served as a guide, and even their failures would have pointed out errors to be avoided; but here, again, I had to encounter disappointment:  in answer to my inquiries, I was assured that the records, both of the Portuguese and Dutch, had long since disappeared from the archives of the colony.

Their loss, whilst in our custody, is the more remarkable, considering the value which was attached to them by our predecessors.  The Dutch, on the conquest of Ceylon in the seventeenth century, seized the official accounts and papers of the Portuguese; and a memoir is preserved by VALENTYN, in which the Governor, Van Goens, on handing over the command to his successor in 1663, enjoins on him the study of these important documents, and expresses anxiety for their careful preservation.[1]

[Footnote 1:  VALENTYN, Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, &c., ch. xiii. p. 174.]

The British, on the capture of Colombo in 1796, were equally solicitous to obtain possession of the records of the Dutch Government.  By Art.  XIV. of the capitulation they were required to be “faithfully delivered over;” and, by Art.  XI., all “surveys of the island and its coasts” were required to be surrendered to the captors.[1] But, strange to say, almost the whole of these interesting and important papers appear to have been lost; not a trace of the Portuguese records, so far as I could discover, remains at Colombo; and if any vestige of those of the Dutch be still extant, they have probably become illegible from decay and the ravages of the white ants.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Amongst a valuable collection of documents presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of London, by the late Sir Alexander Johnston, formerly Chief Justice of Ceylon, there is a volume of Dutch surveys of the Island, containing important maps of the coast and its harbours, and plans of the great works for irrigation in the northern and eastern provinces.]

[Footnote 2:  Note to the second edition.—­Since the first edition was published, I have been told by a late officer of the Ceylon Government, that many years ago, what remained of the Dutch records were removed from the record-room of the Colonial Office to the cutcherry of the government agent of the western province:  where some of them may still be found.]