No. 39. — 1889.] account of ceylon. 311 



allow the Lieutenant to be married. He, however, kept her 

 with him for about three years as his concubine. This is 

 tolerated. But when a man gets a son, and the Portuguese 

 or native woman, especially if the latter has become a 

 Christian, wants to recover her honour, and informs against 

 him to his Commander, he must pay her 300 Dutch florins, 

 or, in our money, 120 rixdollars. Then he is entirely free. 

 But if he cannot or will not give the money, he must marry 

 her, and afterwards as long as she lives, or perhaps as long 

 as he lives himself, remain in the country. If he wants to 

 leave her he must do so in profound secrecy, and during the 

 night, otherwise he will soon be poisoned, as it often 

 happened in Amboina and Banda. These native women are 

 also extremely jealous, and if they only see somebody joking 

 with another woman they at once have the worst suspicion, 

 and they are such adepts in poisoning that they can cause a 

 man to die immediately, or so work that he is tortured during 

 five or six years without having a single hour without pain, 

 until they themselves restore him again to health. They can 

 sew something into the clothes, so that a man has no power 

 with any other woman but themselves ; and I have often 

 heard this said by people who experienced it themselves, 

 and who were very much annoyed at the false position they 

 got into. 



After our Admiral had received from the native Prince all 

 information, we marched on the 18th of May towards the 

 castle, and when we were a quarter of an hour's distance from 

 the suburb they came about 1,100 strong. We soon drove 

 them back and made seventy prisoners, who had to give us 

 the latest news as to how things stood inside. They told us 

 that there were about 40,000 people, old and young, inside, 

 mostly citizens, with their wives, children, and slaves ; the 

 1,100, however, who had come out were soldiers of the King 

 of Portugal, and a few burghers had been amongst them as 

 volunteers. 



We settled down in the suburb in four churches, which 

 were only a gunshot distant from the walls, and there 

 16—91 M 



