602 



MEDIAEVAL HISTORY. 



[PART V. 



who, impelled by religious enthusiasm, set out from his 

 native city Tangiers, in the year 1324, and devoted 



African possessions, and the cassia 

 of the Troglodytic coast supplanted 

 the cinnamon of the far East, and to 

 a great extent excluded it from the 

 market. The Greeks having at 

 length discovered the secret of the 

 Arabs, resorted to the same coun- 

 tries as their rivals in commerce, and 

 surpassing them in practical naviga- 

 tion and the construction of ships, 

 the Sabseans were for some centuries 

 reduced to a state of mercantile 

 dependence and inferiority. In the 

 meantime the Roman Empire de- 

 clined ; the Persians under the Sassa- 

 nides engrossed the intercourse with 

 the East, the trade of India now 

 flowed through the Persian Gulf, and 

 the ports of the Red Sea were de- 

 serted. " Thus the downfall, and it 

 may be the extinction, of the African 

 spice trade probably dates from the 

 close of the sixth century, and Malabar 

 succeeded at once to this branch of 

 commerce." COOLEY, Regio Cin- 

 namomifera, p. 14. Cooley sup- 

 poses that the Malabars may have 

 obtained from Ceylon the cinnamon 

 with which they * supplied the Per- 

 sians ; as IbnBatuta, in the fourteenth 

 century, saw cinnamon trees drifted 

 upon the shores of the island, whither 

 they had been earned by torrents 

 from the forests of the interior ( Ibn 

 Battda, ch. xx. p. 182). The fact of 

 their being found so is in itself suffi- 

 cient evidence, that down to that 

 time no active trade had been carried 

 on in the article ; and the earliest 

 travellers in the thirteenth and four- 

 teenth centuries, MARCO POLO, JOHN 

 OF HESSE, FRA JORDAXUS and others, 

 whilst they allude to cinnamon as 

 one of the chief productions of Mala- 

 bar, speak of Ceylon, notwithstand- 

 ing her wealth in jewels and pearls, 

 as if she were utterly destitute of any 

 epice of this kind. NICOLA DE CONTI, 

 A.D. 1444, is the first European wri- 

 ter, in whose pages I have found 

 Ceylon described as yielding cinna- 

 mon, and he is followed by Barthema, 

 A.D. 150G, and Corsali, A'D. 1515. 



Long after the arrival of Europeans 

 in Ceylon, cinnamon was only found 

 in the forests of the interior, where it 

 was cut and brought away by the 

 Chalias, the caste who, from having 

 been originally weavers, devoted 

 themselves to this new employment. 

 The Chalias are themselves an im- 

 migrant tribe, and, according to their 

 own tradition, they came to the 

 island only a very short time before 

 the appearance of the Portuguese. 

 (See a History of the Chalias, by 

 ADRIAN RAJAPAKSE, a Chief of the 

 Caste, Asiat. Reser. vol. iii. p. 440.) 

 So difficult of access were the forests, 

 that the Portuguese could only obtain 

 ! a full supply from them once in three 

 years ; and the Dutch, to remedy this 

 uncertainty, made regular plantations 

 in the vicinity of their forts about the 

 year 1770 A.D., " so that the cultivation 

 of cinnamon in Ceylon is not yet a cen- 

 tury old." COOLEY, p. 15. It is a 

 question for scientific research rather 

 than for historical scrutiny, whether 

 the cinnamon laurel of Ceylon, as it 

 exists at the present day, is indigenous 

 to the island, or whether it is identical 

 with the cinnamon of Abyssinia, and 

 may have been carried thence by the 

 Arabs ; or whether it was brought to 

 the island from the adjacent conti- 

 nent of India; or imported by the 

 Chinese from islands still further 

 to the east. One fact is notorious 

 at the present day, that nearly the 

 whole of the cinnamon grown iu 

 Ceylon is produced in a small and 

 well-defined area occupying the 

 S.W. quarter of the island, which 

 has been at all times the resort of 

 foreign shipping. The natives, from 

 observing its appearance for the first 

 time in other and unexpected places, 

 believe it to be sown by the birds 

 who cany thither the undigested 

 seeds ; and the Dutch, for this reason, 

 prohibited the shooting of crows, 

 a precaution that would scarcely be 

 necessary for the protection of the 

 plant, had they believed it to be not 

 only indigenous, but peculiar to the 



