No. 35.— 1887.] 



NOTES ON CEYLON. 



167 



soldiers who had given them quarter. Shortly afterwards 

 Colombo was beseiged by the Hollanders, and after they 

 had intrenched themselves as near to the city as they 

 thought necessary, they kept the city in a constant state 

 of alarm, in order to weary out the Portuguese, and in 

 order the better to deceive them, to have soldiers firing 

 at all hours, now in one place, and now in another, with 

 cries of " Kill them ! Kill them ! Charge ! Charge !" This 

 was done at all hours of the night by different soldiers, and 

 in the daytime they did nothing but cannonade, and raise 

 a false alarm here and there ; but seeing that nothing came 

 of this false alarm, they became accustomed to that noise. 

 But one Sunday, after they had raised a still greater alarm, 

 the Portuguese had all gone to their churches, thinking that 

 the Hollanders were tired and would not make any attack that 

 day. But a false alarm changed into a real one, and a 

 bastion was speedily occupied, where only a monk was on 

 guard with a few soldiers ; and notwithstanding that this 

 monk did great mischief by firing with the cannon on the 

 Hollanders, the bastion was occupied before assistance came 

 from the church, the result being that they were obliged to 

 agree to surrender the city to the Hollanders. They were only 

 fifty or somewhat more in number, to wit, of men capable 

 of bearing arms, who were all sent to Coutchyn and Goa, 

 And so Colombo was ceded to the Hollanders. 53 



NOTES BY THE TRANSLATOR. 



1 On the Hog stone, see Baldaeus, Malabar ende Choromandel, p. 169 * 

 Mandelso's Travels into the Indies, translated by John Davies, second 

 edition, p. 124 ; Sir Thomas Herbert's Travels, in Harris's Voyages, II., 

 p. 407 ; and Tavernier's Travels, in Harris's Yoyages, II., p. 375,. 

 Among the gifts sent by the Dutch to the son of the King of Kandy 

 in 1655 was a hogstone. (See Baldseus, Ceylon, chapter XXIY.) 



2 Since this was written, Dr. W. Gr. Yan Dort has, in a paper read 

 before the Ceylon Branch of the British Medical Association, given 

 an account of the contents of the volume, with translations of parts. 

 The greater portion of his paper is printed in the Ceylon Medical 

 Journal, Vol. I., No. 4. 



