^fo. 36. — 1888.] CAPTAIN JOAO RIBEIRO. 



267 



Oylon is, and the right of our Kings to that rich and precious 

 isle. This book consists of 24 chapters, and has at the end 

 the map of the Island. In the second he treats of the pro- 

 gress of the war which we carried on in Ceylon with the 

 natives and afterwards with the Dutch : it consists of 27 

 chapters. In the third he seeks to show the mistakes that 

 were made in the conquest of India, and is of opinion that 

 we should simply have taken and peopled Ceylon : this 

 consists of 10 chapters. 



" From this it would seem that the laborious and praise- 

 worthy Barbosa Machado had not an exact acquaintance with 

 this work ; for, speaking of it in the Bibliotheca Lusitana, he 

 says that it consists of two parts, and that the first has 24 chap- 

 ters and the second 10, which does not conform to the truth. 



" As to the author himself, neither does Barbosa give us any 

 information, except his name, nor have we met with any 

 elsewhere. From a perusal of his work we learn : — 



"That Joao Ribeiro, having gone to India with the Viceroy 

 Conde de Aveiras Joao da Silva Tello, arrived in those 

 dominions in September, 1640. (Bk. II., chap. VIII.) 



" That in October of the same year, being then 14 years 

 old, he was sent to Ceylon with 400 other soldiers, when the 

 Captain-General of the Island was D. Filipe Mascarenhas. 

 (Bk. II., chap. VIII.) 



"That he served the King forty and a half years, from 

 March, 1640, to October, 1680, when he returned to Lisbon, 

 nineteen and a half years of that service having been passed in 

 India and eighteen years in Ceylon. (Dedication and Bk. III., 

 chap. IX.) 



" That in 1658, Jafanapatam having been taken by the Hol- 

 landers, Captain Joao Ribeiro was sent, with other prisoners 

 of war, to Batavia, and there thrown into prison. (Bk. II., 

 chap. XXVII.) 



" Of his good service, and of the zeal and affection of which 

 he deemed the honour, the glory, and the interests of Portugal 

 worthy, we have frequent evidences throughout the whole 

 work, and in the reflections in which the author now and 

 again indulges. 



" The work of Captain Joao Ribeiro has suffered the same 

 fate as, through our negligence, has befallen many other 

 works of Portuguese writers, which, not having gained the 

 attention of the authors' fellow-countrymen, come into the 

 hands of strangers, not simply to be translated and published 

 by them, with some discredit to us and to our spirit of 

 inquiry and literary energy (which would be a lesser evil), 

 but to be so altered, mutilated, and maimed by unfaithful 

 and sometimes inapt translations, as to be discreditable alike 

 to the translator and to the author himself. 



49—89 



E 



