No. 36. — 1888.] CAPTAIN JOAO ribeiro. 



body of the work abounds in similar peculiarities of spelling, 

 of which I may instance surgiad for cirurgiao, sanguexugas 

 for sanguesugas, cocodrillo for crocodile*, pardvellas for 

 parabolas, Jazus for Jesus, Sseilad for Ceilao. 



Another feature of the MS. is that it contains no erasures : in 

 some cases a word or a letter has been altered, but where the 

 copyist has written a whole sentence wrongly he has allowed 

 it to stand, putting alias after it, and then giving the correct 

 words. This is ingenious, and certainly has the advantage 

 of preserving the neat appearance of the MS. Another charac- 

 teristic of the MS. is the running together of several words 

 and the use of contractions, in the case of the word que 

 especially. 



I shall now proceed to compare the MS. with the printed 

 edition, chapter by chapter, noting the chief points in which 

 they differ, and showing where Le Grand has blundered and 

 where he has been misled by the faithless copyist. 



Book I. 



In L.A. 1 we have a summary of the contents of the book 

 given : this is wanting in B., and of course therefore in LeG. 



Chapter Z— LeG. has abbreviated this chapter, omitting the 

 statement of Ribeiro that Ceylon "By its position is the 

 mistress of all those regions which are commonly called India, 

 that is, the kingdoms and provinces which exist between the 

 two beautiful rivers Indus and Ganges : which in distance one 

 from the other comprise more than six hundred leagues of 

 coast." In this passage, where L.A. reads formosos (beautiful) 

 B. has famozos (famous). While Ribeiro says that the length 

 of Ceylon is seventy-two leagues, LeG. deliberately alters this 

 to sixty-two. He also omits the comparison of the Gulf of 

 Mannar to the Adriatic, and the statement that it was thirty- 

 six leagues in breadth. 



Chapter II. — L.A. has in one place a misprint Galle for 

 Gatte, the word being correctly given a little lower down. 



1 1 use the following contractions : — L.A. for the Lisbon Academy printed 

 edition ; B. for the Burnell MS. ; LeG. for Le Grand's French translation. 



