In the north, where the influence of the monsoons is felt with less force and regularity, and where, to counteract their uncertainty, the rain is collected in reservoirs, a wider discretion is left to the husbandman in the choice of season for his operations.[1] Two crops of grain, however, are the utmost that is taken from the land, and in many instances only one.  The soil near the coast is light and sandy, but in the great central districts of Neuera-kalawa and the Wanny, there is found in the midst of the forests a dark vegetable mould, in which in former times rice was abundantly grown by the aid of those prodigious artificial works for irrigation which still form one of the wonders of the island.  Many of the tanks, though partially in ruins, cover an area from ten to fifteen miles in circumference.  They are now generally broken and decayed; the waters which would fertilise a province are allowed to waste themselves in the sands, and hundreds of square miles capable of furnishing food for all the inhabitants of Ceylon are abandoned to solitude and malaria, whilst rice for the support of the non-agricultural population is annually imported from the opposite coast of India.

[Footnote 1:  This peculiarity of the north of Ceylon was noticed by the Chinese traveller FA HIAN, who visited the island in the fourth century, and says of the country around Anarajapoora:  “L’ensemencement des champs est suivant la volonte des gens; il n’y a point de temps pour cela.”—­Fo[)e] Kou[)e] Ki; p. 332.]

Talawas.—­In these districts of the lowlands, especially on the eastern coast of the island, and in the country watered by the Mahawelli-ganga and the other great rivers which flow towards the Bay of Bengal and the magnificent estuary of Trincomalie, there are open glades which diversify the forest scenery somewhat resembling the grassy patenas in the hills, but differing from them in the character of their soil and vegetation.  These park-like meadows, or, as the natives call them, “talawas,” vary in extent from one to a thousand acres.  They are belted by the surrounding woods, and studded with groups of timber and sometimes with single trees of majestic dimensions.  Through these pastures the deer troop in herds within gunshot, bounding into the nearest cover when disturbed.

Lower still and immediately adjoining the sea-coast, the broken forest gives place to brushwood, with here and there an assemblage of dwarf shrubs; but as far as the eye can reach, there is one vast level of impenetrable jungle, broken only by the long sweep of salt marshes which form lakes in the rainy season, but are dry between the monsoons, and crusted with crystals that glitter like snow in the sunshine.

On the western side of the island the rivers have formed broad alluvial plains, in which the Dutch attempted to grow sugar.  The experiment has been often resumed since; but even here the soil is so defective, that the cost of artificially enriching it has hitherto been a serious obstruction to success commercially, although in one or two instances, plantations on a small scale have succeeded to a certain extent.