In old Ceylon . , and wouldstill have ghostly tenants to-day in the twilight, were butthe disturbing intrusion of ones own bodily presenceremoved. For this first pool is not the only carved treasure thathuddles in the cliffs foot amid the debris and the fallenleaves of centuries. Just beyond there lies another pool—simpler, smaller, and yet in its way more elaborate. Thefirst had a bath within a bath, regularly walled, with perfectcopings and mouldings ; a carved dressing-chamber withinthe rock, and pillars cut from the same to hold the second one is rougher in design—a bald square,
In old Ceylon . , and wouldstill have ghostly tenants to-day in the twilight, were butthe disturbing intrusion of ones own bodily presenceremoved. For this first pool is not the only carved treasure thathuddles in the cliffs foot amid the debris and the fallenleaves of centuries. Just beyond there lies another pool—simpler, smaller, and yet in its way more elaborate. Thefirst had a bath within a bath, regularly walled, with perfectcopings and mouldings ; a carved dressing-chamber withinthe rock, and pillars cut from the same to hold the second one is rougher in design—a bald square, witha simple cavity cut in the sloping rock behind. But thatslope is carved into the finest piece of naturalistic sculpturein Ceylon. Through a field of great lotuses wild elephantsgo trumpeting and plunging; their drawing, their execu-tion, their spirit, is no less vivid and faultless than thoseof the elks and mammoths, drawn long since on bone bythose first realists in art, the nameless savages of the Tarn. RocK-Hi:\v.\ Baiuing-Pooi. near AN ABBEY AND A HERMITAGE 329 and Garonne. Delicate, fiery, skilful, this sculpture hasevery merit, Alas that it stands here, tragic and forgotten,open to the rains of the ages, veiled with dead leaves thatlodge in the deep lines of the work, corroded by thedamps and lichen of the dell ! And here the clearing ends. We must leave that for-saken bathing-place, that holy quiet spot amid the tangledtumbled rocks that range along the side of the woodedlake. We must climb the embankment, continue alongit in the eye of sunset, and so, descending, wind bydevious tracks along tiny rushing streams from the sluice,all bedded in greenery and great trees, past the groundsof the new hotel, back into the Sacred City. CHAPTER XVIII mihintal:^, the holy hill Not in ordinary circumstances does a bullock-cart smileupon me. Slow, and slow beyond words, painful andlumbering, is ones progress in the tiny arched-in caravan,springless, like a sect
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