With all this compass of power, however, (obtained from its hills and its varying scale of hills,) Ceylon has not much of waste ground, in the sense of being irreclaimable—­for of waste ground, in the sense of being unoccupied, she has an infinity.  What are the dimensions of Ceylon?  Of all islands in this world which we know, in respect of size it most resembles Ireland, being about one-sixth part less.  But, for a particular reason, we choose to compare it with Scotland, which is very little different in dimensions from Ireland, having (by some hundred or two of square miles) a trifling advantage in extent.  Now, say that Scotland contains a trifle more than thirty thousand square miles, the relation of Ceylon to Scotland will become apparent when we mention that this Indian island contains about twenty-four thousand five hundred of similar square miles.  Twenty-four and a half to thirty—­or forty-nine to sixty—­there lies the ratio of Ceylon to Scotland.  The ratio in population is not less easily remembered:  Scotland has now (October 1843) hard upon three millions of people:  Ceylon, by a late census, has just three half millions.  But strange indeed, where every thing seems strange, is the arrangement of this Ceylonese territory and people.  Take a peach:  what you call the flesh of the peach, the substance which you eat, is massed orbicularly around a central stone—­often as large as a pretty large strawberry.  Now in Ceylon, the central district, answering to this peach-stone, constitutes a fierce little Liliputian kingdom, quite independent, through many centuries, of the lazy belt, the peach-flesh, which swathes and enfolds it, and perfectly distinct by the character and origin of its population.  The peach-stone is called Kandy, and the people Kandyans.  These are a desperate variety of the tiger-man, agile and fierce as he is, though smooth, insinuating, and full of subtlety as a snake, even to the moment of crouching for their last fatal spring.  On the other hand the people of the engirdling zone are called the Cinghalese, spelled according to fancy of us authors and compositors, who legislate for the spelling of the British empire, with an S or a C. As to moral virtue, in the sense of integrity or fixed principle, there is not much lost upon either race:  in that point they are “much of a muchness.”  They are also both respectable for their attainments in cowardice; but with this difference, that the Cinghalese are soft, inert, passive cowards:  but your Kandyan is a ferocious little bloody coward, full of mischief as a monkey, grinning with desperation, laughing like a hyena, or chattering if you vex him, and never to be trusted for a moment.  The reader now understands why we described the Ceylonese man as a tiger-cat in his noblest division:  for, after all, these dangerous gentlemen in the peach-stone are a more promising race than the silky and nerveless population surrounding them.  You can strike no fire out of the Cinghalese:  but the Kandyans show fight continually, and would even persist in fighting, if there were in this world no gunpowder, (which exceedingly they dislike,) and if their allowance of arrack were greater.