It is impossible to read this narrative of Pliny without being struck with its fidelity to truth in many particulars; and even one passage, to which exception has been taken as an imposture of the Singhalese envoys, when they manifested surprise at the quarters in which the sun rose and set in Italy, has been referred[3] to the peculiar system of the Hindus, in whose maps north and south are left and right; but it may be explained by the fact of the sun passing overhead in Ceylon, in his transit to the northern solstice; instead of hanging about the south, as in Italy, after acquiring some elevation above the horizon.

[Footnote 1:  “Ultra montes Emodos Seras quoque ab ipsis aspici notos etiam commercio.”—­PLINY, lib. vi. c. 24.]

[Footnote 2:  See the chapter on the Veddahs, Vol.  II.  Part II. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 3:  See WILFORD’S Sacred Islands of the West, Asiat.  Res., vol. x. p. 41.]

The rapid progress of navigation and discovery in the Indian seas, within the interval of sixty or seventy years which elapsed between the death of Pliny and the compilation of the great work of Ptolemy is in no instance more strikingly exhibited than on comparing the information concerning Taprobane, which is given by the latter in his “System of Geography,"[1] with the meagre knowledge of the island possessed by all his predecessors.  From his position at Alexandria and his opportunites of intercourse with mariners returning from their distant voyages, he enjoyed unusual facilities for ascertaining facts and distances, and in proof of his singular diligence he was enabled to lay down in his map of Ceylon the position of eight promontories upon its coast, the mouths of five principal rivers, four bays, and harbours; and in the interior he had ascertained that there were thirteen provincial divisions, and nineteen towns, besides two emporiums on the coast; five great estuaries which he terms lakes[2], two bays, and two chains of mountains, one of them surrounding Adam’s Peak, which he designates as Maloea—­the name by which the hills that environ it are known in the Mahawanso.  He mentions the recent change of the name to Salike (which Lassen conjectures to be a seaman’s corruption of the real name Sihala[3]); and he notices, in passing, the fact that the natives wore their hair then as they do at the present day, in such length and profusion as to give them an appearance of effeminacy, “[Greek:  mallois gynaikeiois eis hapan anadedemenos]."[4]

[Footnote 1:  PTOLEMY, Geog. lib. vii. c. 4, tab. xii, Asiae.  In one important particular a recent author has done justice to the genius and perseverance of Ptolemy, by demonstrating that although mistaken in adopting some of the fallacious statements of his predecessors, he has availed himself of better data by which to fix the position of Ceylon; so that the western coast in the Ptolemaic map coincides with the modern Ceylon in the vicinity of Colombo.