MODERN HISTORY. 



[Part VI. 



A.D. 



1505. 



lon.^ Vasco de Gama, after rounding the Cape, anchored 

 at Calicut a.d. 1498, and Lorenzo de Ahiieyda visited 

 Galle A.D. 1505 ; but it was not till a.d. 1517, that Lopez 

 Soarez, the third viceroy of the Indies, bethought himself 

 of sending an expedition to form a permanent trading 

 settlement at Colombo^ ; and so httle importance did the 

 Portuguese attach to the acquisition, that within a very 

 few years, an order (which was not acted upon) was 

 issued from Goa to abandon the fort, as not worth tlic 

 cost of retention.^ 



Portugiiezas ou Ihes suo visinhas ; and 

 was published at Lisbon in 18^3(3, from 

 the identical MS. presented by the 

 author to King Pedro II. lu this, 

 ElBEYRO entitles his work, Fatalidade 

 Historica da llha de CeiJdo ; and the 

 editor, after alluding in strong terms ■ 

 to the discreditable neglect in which 

 it had so long been permitted to re- 

 main in Portugal, points out that its 

 French translator, Le Grand, had 

 not only committed gross errors, but 

 had omitted whole chapters from the 

 2nd and 3rd Books, and altered the. 

 sense of numerous passages, o^sving to 

 his imperfect acquaintance -n-ith the 

 Portuguese language. Ilibep-o illus- 

 ti-ated his narrative by a map of 

 Ceylon, which is a remarkable evi- 

 dence of the veiy slight knowledge of 

 geogi'aphy possessed by his countiy- 

 men in the seventeenth century. A 

 fac simile of it is given above. 



' De Bakros, dec. iii. lib. ii. ch. 2. 

 vol. iii. pt. i. p. 119. 



^ This fact is not without signi- 

 ficance in relation to the claim of 

 Ceylon to a " natural monopoly " of 

 the finest qualities of cinnamon. Its 

 existence as a production of the 

 island had been made known to 

 Europe by Di Conti, seventy years 

 before ; and lux I^atuta asserts that 

 Malabar had been supplied -w-ith cin- 

 namon from Ceylon at a still earlier 

 period. It may therefore be in- 

 ferred, that there can have been no- 

 thing very remarkable in the quality 

 or repute of the spice at the beginning 

 of the sixteenth centuiy; else the 



Portuguese, who had been mainly 

 attracted to the East by the fame ot 

 its spices, would have made their 

 earliest visit to the coimtiy which 

 afterwards acquired its renown by 

 producing the rarest of them. 



" canella 

 Com que Ceilao he rica, illustre, e bella." 

 Camoens, canto ix. st. 14. 



On the contrary, their first in- 

 quiries were for jwpper, and their 

 chief resort was to the Dekkan, 

 north of Cape Comorin, which was 

 celebrated for producing it. (Toh- 

 fut-id-3Ii(jahideen, ch. iv. s. i. p. 77.) 

 It was not till 1516 that Barbosa 

 proclaimed the superiority of Ceylon 

 cinnamon over all others, and there 

 is reason to believe, whatever doubt 

 there may be as to its early introduc- 

 tion into the island, that its high re- 

 putation is comparatively modern, 

 and attiibutable to the attention 

 bestowed upon its preparation for 

 market by the Portuguese, and 

 afterwards in its cultivation by the 

 Dutch. De Barros, however, goes 

 so far as to describe Ceylon as the 

 Mother of Cinnamon, " canella de 

 que ella he madre como dissemos." 

 — Dec. iii. lib. ii. ch. i, 



' Faria y Souza, vol. i. ch. ix. p. 

 281. Valexty^t says the order was 

 actually earned into force, and the 

 fort of Colombo demolished by the 

 Portuguese in 1.524, but shortly after- 

 wards reconstructed. {0ml en niemo 

 Oost-Indien, 8fc., vol. v. pt. i. ch. vii. 

 p. 91.) 



