NO. 41.— 1890.] REBELION DB CEYLAN. 



489 



well that his name was never known, but not so the cause of 

 it. The principal instigator of the attempt was commonly 

 supposed to be an intimate kinsman of Constantino 

 de Sa himself, who wounded him still more with the 

 tongue than he did with the sword, persuading himself by 

 so many reasons to his satisfaction that he asked to return 

 to Portugal that same year, so that there were not wanting 

 some who made out that he was the real author of the 

 offence, leaving Constantino de Sa to suffer alone the effects 

 of that ignominious insult taught by this lesson. 



He put a stop to certain licentious practices amongst the 

 youth, which the age and the common vices of the country 

 had introduced. Nothing would make him swerve from the 

 path of honour, even in the midst of the most sumptuous 

 entertainments and feasts, where many idle and gallant 

 things might, it is presumed, have been found more to his 

 taste to talk about ; but his conversation was always that of 

 a soldier, on arms and war, liberally giving to the needy and 

 keeping open house for many. There were thirty with him 

 when he arrived in the winter at Goa. Here they lived 

 at his expense, whilst he himself lived the life they 

 formerly did in these States, which began with the conquests 

 for glory and fame, disinterested as the first nobles who 



in the second volume, Part I., of his " Voyage to the East Indies, the 

 Maldives, the Moluccas, and Brazil," printed for the Hakluyt Society. 



The Portuguese have no sooner made the Cape of Good Hope, but 

 they are all Fidalgoes or gentlemen, and add the title of Bom to the 

 single name of Pedro or Jeronimo, which they received at their baptism, 

 from whence they are called the Fidalgoes or gentlemen of the Cape of 

 Good Hope. As they change their name, they also change their nature, 

 for it may be truly said that the Indian-Portugals are the most revengeful 

 persons, and the most jealous of their wives of any persons in the world. 

 And w T hen the least suspicion creeps into their noddles, they rid them- 

 selves of them either by poison or dagger. If they have an enemy, they 

 never pardon him ; but if he be a person of that courage they dare not 

 grapple with him ; their masters have attending upon them a sort of black 

 slaves, that if they command them to kill any one, the slaves will do it 

 with a blind obedience, which the} 7, do either with a dagger or a pistol, 

 or else by knocking the party on the head with a club, which they always 

 carry, about the length of an hand-pike. — Ta vernier, Travels, Part II., 

 Chapter XIII. 



