Note 105 — Chapter XI · FROM KANDY TO ANURADHAPURA

Sir James Emerson Tennant states (vol. ii. pp. 501-508) that although it was the dry season when he visited the Padivil-kulam, the water still covered an area of ten miles in diameter, and the stream issuing from it by the great breach in the embankment was about 300 feet broad, and so impetuous that the horses had difficulty in crossing it.

Sir James gives a most fascinating description of the many thousands of water-birds which he, arriving long before dawn, saw nesting on trees or among the swampy sedges of this utter solitude,—tall flamingoes, herons, egrets, storks, ibises, and many more, as also a vast colony of pelicans, who had built their heavy nests, each containing three eggs, in the tops of tall trees. When the sun rose, all the birds soared slowly away to the sea-shore, distant about twenty miles, there to seek their breakfast. The lake was swarming with crocodiles hungrily watching for the fall of young birds.