In like manner, and with still greater rapidity, is a change
effected in the face of nature. As the flowers usurp the place
of weeds under the care of man, so, when his hand is wanting, a
few short weeks bury them beneath an overwhelming mass of thorns.
In one year a jungle will conceal all signs of recent
cultivation. Is it, therefore, a mystery that Ceylon is covered
with such vast tracts of thorny jungle, now that her inhabitants
are gone?
Throughout the world there is a perpetual war between man and
nature, but in no country has the original curse of the earth
been carried out to a fuller extent than in Ceylon: "thorns also
and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." This is indeed
exemplified when a few months neglect of once-cultivated land
renders it almost impassable, and where man has vanished from the
earth and thorny jungles have covered the once broad tracts of
prosperous cultivation.
A few years will thus produce an almost total ruin throughout a
deserted city. The air of desolation created by a solitude of
six centuries can therefore be easily imagined. There exists,
however, among the ruins of Pollanarua a curious instance of the
power of the smallest apparent magnitude to destroy the works of
man.
