No. 36.— 1888.] 



CAPTAIN JOAO KIBEIRO. 



273 



A word now as to Lee's translation of Le Grand. From a 

 somewhat cursory comparison of it with the French I have 

 found the translation generally accurate, and have detected 

 only a few serious errors. One of these occurs in chapter 

 III. of Book I., where Le Grand has : — " On n'y manque pas 

 non plus de bre, ni de mines de fer." Lee seems to have 

 misread bre (Portuguese breu, resin, pitch) as ble, and so 

 translates : — " Nor is corn wanting, or iron mines." 1 He has 

 omitted several of Le Grand's notes, but has appended many 

 of his own, which are generally useful and correct. In some 

 cases, however, he has been sorely mystified, owing to the 

 fault of Le Grand or his manuscript. These I shall touch upon 

 further on. He gives facsimiles of Le Grand's plates, but not 

 of the map of Ceylon, which was missing from the copy of 

 Le Grand from which he made his translation. Though, 

 through no fault of his, Lee's book cannot be accepted as a 

 faithful translation of Ribeiro, it will always be of value, if 

 only for the lengthy appendix referred to above. 



I now come to consider the Burnell MS. of Ribeiro of 

 which I have spoken above. It is stated in the memoir 

 of Le Grand from which I have quoted that the Abbe 

 found the MS. at Lisbon in the possession of Dom Joao 

 Luis d'Acunha. (The MS. referred to by Barbosa Machado 

 may perhaps be the one from which the Lisbon edition was 

 printed.) Its subsequent history I have failed to trace. Dr. 

 Burnell seems to have purchased it from Maisonneuve & Co., 

 of Paris, but the latter are unable to say how it came 

 into their hands. It is a small quarto of 202 leaves, written 

 mostly in a clear hand, though in parts, especially at the end, 

 the ink has eaten through the paper and made it brittle like 

 tinder. It is bound in brown leather, with gilt ornamenta- 

 tion on the back and the single word " Fatalidade." It 

 has no title-page, the first page containing the dedication of 



1 Another most ridiculous blunder that he has committed is the 

 rendering throughout of Ribeiro's ' ; As Grevayas " (which Le Grand has 

 transferred to his French version without translating) as "the Gravets" ! 

 Of course the Giruwa pattu is meant. 



