28 MODERN HISTORY. [Part VI. 



A.D. nected with the Coiu-ts of Justice, merchants, and 



1597. . 1 



traders. 



The vahie of Galle consisted chiefly in the facihties 

 which its harbour afforded for commercial operations, 

 and the Portuguese did not think it necessary to increase 

 its natm^al strength by any considerable mihtary defences. 

 Caltura and Negombo were maintained chiefly as stations 

 for the collection of cinnamon, and the ports on the op- 

 posite side of the island, Batticaloa and TrincomaHe, were 

 neither occupied nor fortified till shortly before the ex- 

 pulsion of the Portuguese from Ceylon. 

 A.D. It was not till the year 1617, that they took forcible 

 1G17. possession of Jaffna, and having deposed the last sovereign 

 of the Malabar dynasty, assumed the dii'ect government 

 of the country. Jaffna had long been coveted by them, 

 less from any capabihties wdiich it presented for extend- 

 ing their commerce than for the security it gave to their 

 settlements in the richer districts of the south ; and ap- 

 parently for the opportunity which it presented of dis- 

 playing their missionary zeal in a region insusceptible of 

 political resistance. Their first attempts to reduce this 

 part of the island had been made in 1544, when an ex- 

 pedition, fitted out to plunder the Hindu temples on the 

 south coast of the Dekkan, summoned the chief of the 

 Peninsula either to submit and become tributary to 

 Portugal, or to prepare to encounter the marauding 

 fleet. He chose the former alternative, and agreed to 

 pay 4000 ducats yearl}^^ In the same year such num- 

 bers of the inhabitants of Manaar embraced Christianity 

 at the hands of the Eoman Cathohc missionaries under 

 the direction of St. Prancis Xavier, that the Eaja of 

 JafFnapatam sought to exterminate apostacy by the 

 slaughter of six hundred of the new converts. The 

 heresy, however, reached his own palace ; his eldest 

 son embraced the new faith, and was put to death in 



• Faria t Souza, vol. ii. pt. i. ch. xiii. p. 83. 



