enjoyment of that light and peace. It followed the bed of a mountain stream, which began in a mere pleat of the hills, tumbling often in white cascades, and enduring no boat upon its waters until half its course was run. But here it challenged man to essay a fall; for where it burst its way over rocky slopes were channels jeopardous and hardly navigable, sequences of foaming rapids, races of wild water swirling round opposing boulders, and careering indignant of restraint between long walls of beetling rock. Here when the sun had gone down we would embark with a crew of lithe brown men in a boat hewn from a single tree, seamless and stoutly fashioned to be the unharmed plaything of such rocks and boisterous waters as these. In these rapids the river waked to consciousness of mighty life, tossing our little craft through a riot of dancing waves, whirling it round the base of perpendicular rocks set like adamant in the hissing waters, sweeping it helpless as a petal down some glassy plane stilled, as it were, into a concentrated wrath of movement. The men sprang from side to side, from bow to stern, staving the craft with a miraculous deftness from a projecting boulder, forcing her into a new course, steadying her as she reeled in the shock and strain of the conflict, while their long poles bent continually like willow wands against her battered sides. The steersman stood silent, except when he shouted above all the din some resonant, eruptive word of command; the men responded by breathless invocations to their gods, relaxing no tense sinew until the pent waters rushed out into some broad pool where the eased stream went brimming silently, gathering new strength in the darkness of its central deeps.

At such places the moon would perhaps be obscured by passing clouds, and we would land upon an eyot until she shone once more in a clear heaven. Stretched at length upon the fine white sand waiting for her return, we could hear the boom of waters in the distance calling us on to a renewal of the conflict. These periods of great stillness, interposed between tumults past and impending, had their own refinement of pleasure as far above the joys of fenced and covenanted ease as the bivouac of the hard campaign surpasses slumber in the fine linen of a captured city: they brought the wandering mind into communion with elemental forces, and seemed to hold it expectant of supernatural events. In that interlunar twilight there reigned a solemn sense of wonder evoked here eternally, one felt, from the ancient time, with the rustling of stirred foliage and the voice of those far waters for its music.

The lulled reason yielded place to reverie, and the whole rapt being abandoned itself like an Orphic worshipper to the guidance of an unseen mysteriarch. This acquiescence in the swift succession of calm to fury and stress, resembled the quiet which may be conceived to follow sudden death; the heightened sense of vicissitude in things summoned up and sustained a solemn mood. All the while that we lay charmed and half oppressed in this atmosphere as of an under-world, the clouds were drawing forward on their course; and as their last fringe trailed slowly by and the moon was revealed once more, the spell was broken in an instant by human voices calling us to re-embark. Again we glided to the verge of tumultuous falls, again we were flung through foaming narrows and labyrinthine passages of torn rocks, until, the last promontory turned with arrowy swiftness, we shot through a postern of the granite barrier and bounded far into still water fringed with trees of profoundest shadow. We put in to shore, for this stage of our journey was over; the dawn was near; the carts stood waiting on the road. But the influence of the wonderful night, clinging about us, would keep us long silent, as if awed by the passing of ancient Vedic gods.

I will not describe the later stages of these journeys: the coasting voyages in restful ships that seemed built to sail Mæander; the touchings at old wharfless ports; the visits to lone temples where Herodotus would have loved to linger; the rambles on the slopes of Adam's Peak; the meditations amid the ruins of Anaradhapura and Pollanarrua, ancient homes of kings, now stripped of every glory but that of these sonorous names—such are the records of every traveller, and are chronicled to satiety by a hundred hasty pens. A month of wandering within the fringe of civilization would be closed by a last week of patriarchal travel, bringing us back to our remote valley just as the clouds of the coming monsoon were ranging in denser ranks along the evening sky like the tents of a beleaguering army. Hardly had we time to settle down for the wet season, see to the stacking of fire-logs, and be sure that every tile on the roof was firm in its appointed place, when the embattled host seemed to break up from its last camp, and advance upon us along the whole line that the eye perceived.

One year I was witness of the first onset, which came in the late afternoon—an immediate shock of massed clouds without throwing forward of skirmishers or any prelude of the vanguard. Our home looked down upon a gentle incline of open grassy land to a broad belt of jungle in the middle distance; here the undergrowth and small trees had been newly cleared away, opening out a dim far view across an uncumbered leaf-strewn floor into the backward gloom of the forest. I sat with my eyes fixed upon the trees, drawing the rain on with the whole strength of desire to the parched country lying there faint with the exhaustion of three months of drought. While I watched, the deep line of cloud, at first distinct from the forest-top along which it came rolling, insensibly merged with the foliage, until every contour was lost in a common gloom, only the great bare stems below standing pale against the gathering darkness. There was an intense stillness everywhere like the silence of expectation which falls upon an awestruck crowd; the very insects had ceased their usual song. And now the ear caught a distant sound, vague and deep, coming up out of the mid darkness, and growing to a mighty volume as a sudden wind swept out from the sounding foliage into the open land and searched every cranny of the house as it passed. Then, as if drawn by the wind, there came into view among the nearest tree-stems a moving grey line advancing with a long roar until it hid the whole forest from sight: it was the wave of battle about to break upon us. It came on like a wall, enormous, irresistible; one instant, and it had devoured the intervening space; another, and we were lost in the deluge, and the great rain drops were spilled upon the roof with the noise of continuous thunder. As the deep sound reverberated through the roof above me, I went in exulting to a hearth piled with blazing logs, glad in the prospect of renewing for many weeks old and quiet habitudes of indoor life, rich with solace of books and tranquil meditation.

I have dwelt upon the outward aspects of my life in exile, because the sojourn of these years amid the hills and forests taught a natural leechcraft which was to stand me in good stead in coming years, and may stand in equal stead other souls desolate as mine. Like the Nile brimming over the fields, a flood of joy from nature overlaid my parched being, enriching it with a fertile loam, and shielding it from the irritations of the world. I lay fallow beneath the still, sunlit waters, unharrowed by teasing points of doubt, and porous to the influence of an all-encompassing peace. Exile had opened to me a new heaven and a new earth, whose freshness and calm