I S L A N D O F C E Y L O N. tqi 



right over the lives and fortunes of all his fubjeas. He was a 

 moft barbarous tyrant, and took a diabolical delight in putting 

 his fubjeas to the moft cruel and lingering deaths. Elephants 

 were often the executioners of his vengeance, and were directed 

 to pull the unhappy criminals liinb from limb with their trunk?, 

 and fcatter them to the birds of the air, or beafts of the field. 

 The emperor's refidence was at Candy, nearly in the center of 

 the ifland; but he was, in Knox's, time, by the rebellion of his 

 fubjefts, obliged to defert that city. The government is faid, 

 by PFo/ff, p. 235, to be at prefent very mild, and regulated by 

 the ftatute laws of the land, the joint produdiion of divers wile 

 princes, and are conlidered as facred by the Cingakfe. It is pof- 

 lible that the tyrant, in the days of Knox, had deftroyed the 

 liberties of his country, which were afterwards reftored. The Robert Knox. 

 author Robert Knox is a writer fully to be depended on ; a plain 

 honeft man, who, in 1657, failed in one of the Eaft India Com- 

 pany's fliips to Madras', and on the return, in 1659, was forced 

 by a ftorm into Ceylon, to refit : when his father (who was cap- 

 tain) went on fhore, and, with fixteen more of the crew, were 

 feized by the emperor's foldiers, and detained. The Captain 

 died in a year's time. Our author lived nineteen years in the 

 ifland, and faw the greateft part of it. At length, with difficulty, 

 he efcaped, and arrived fafe in England, in September 1680. His 

 hiftory of the ifland, and of his adventures, were publKhed in 

 1680 ; and appears to be the only authentic account of the inter- 

 nal parts, and the only one that can be entirely relied on. 



There is in this illand a race of wild men, called Wedas, or Wedas, on 

 Bedas ; they fpeak the Cingakfe language, but inhabit the depth ^°^^ ' 



Q of 



