60 JOURNAL R. A. s. (ceylon), [Vol. VII., Pt. II. 



are naturally left to believe that once there, the mariners 

 recognised the country, knew their way home, and ran no 

 further risk. 



Also had there not been regular intercourse between that 

 port and the Red Sea, how would the Romans have found 

 their way home ? and is it likely an embassy would have been 

 sent had it not been recognised that there was no difficulty in 

 the relations of the two countries? On the contrary, once 

 arrived, having recruited their strength, the sailors start off 

 home as if on a beaten track, and without comment on their 

 safe return, bring an embassy and presents. Further, from 

 Pliny's silence, there can be no doubt the embassy went home, 

 and was not condemned to a perpetual exile at Rome ; and in 

 consequence doubtless of its safe return with presents, we find 

 another arriving in Rome, when Julian was Emperor. 



Fifty years later still, in A. D. 110, Ptolemy gives his 

 wonderful map taken down from the narratives of sailors, 

 which clearly shows how well our N.W. coast was known even 

 in its minutest details, and the course of its rivers inland. 



In A.D. 410 Palladius writes, on the faith of a Theban mer- 

 chant, that in the neighbourhood are a thousand islands, 

 one group called Maniolae, and five large rivers. 



Now, in the boundaries assumed for Kalah we have a chain 

 of islands recently joined and forming the Akkara-pattu of 

 Kalpitiya, the long island of Karativu (no doubt then a group 

 of detached islets), and various others scattered from Puttalam 

 to Kutiraimalai, while on the North are Mannar, Ramessaram, 

 and the adjacent group, parts of which are now connected 

 by sandbanks, and form Adam's bridge ; doubtless the Ma- 

 niola?. Beyond these again are the islands of Jaffoa,Delft and 

 many others. 



By this hypothesis the untenable supposition of Sir E. Ten- 

 nent and M. Landresse, that the far distant Maldives were 

 referred to ; is at once avoided. 



