No. 57. — 1906.] coconut cultivation. 



63 



Batticottaas having behind ''an orchard of cocoe and Portu- 

 guese fig trees, besides potatoes, bananaee," &c. Patchiara- 

 palle was much infested with elephants, "by reason of the 

 vast quantity of wild palm-trees* that grow here and afford 

 food to the poorer sort of inhabitants, though the elephants 

 threw down some hundreds every year, being very greedy 

 after the fruit when it comes to maturity." This could 

 scarcely be the coconut — evidently the palmyra. But in 

 chapter XLVII., in referring generally to the people of Jaffna 

 and the climate, Bald as us makes a statement which shows 

 that to some extent at least the people cultivated coconuts. 

 He mentions the eight months of dry weather when perhaps 

 rain only falls three times, " which is the reason that 

 they are obliged even to water the coco trees till they are 

 six years old," and he afterwards refers generally to "Cocoes" 

 in Ceylon. As regards the neighbourhood of the capital, 

 here is a curious paragraph from Baldseus, referring to the 

 beginning of the siege of Colombo : " The following day a 

 certain Portuguese prisoner was brought into the camp ; he 

 was sent from Milagre, and had lived fourteen days upon 

 grass and herbs in the woods."! This would seem to show 

 there were no coconuts in the woods near Milagraya, and in- 

 deed we know Governor Van Imhoff in the next century had 

 jungle felled along the route from Colombo to Kalutara in 

 order, under the rules of rajahdriya^o have coconuts planted 

 by the villagers. 



We can now sum up the position of the coconut palm in 

 Ceylon about the middle of the 17th century, when the 

 Portuguese occupation of the Maritime Provinces came to an 

 end. In the first place we may venture to say that the cultiva- 

 tion was almost^entirely confined'to the south and west of the 

 Island. There is little evidence of the coconut palm grow- 

 ing along the eastern coast, at any rate above Arugam Bay 



* This is one of the translator's errors. The original has palmeer — 

 palmyra.— D. W. F. 



f See also chap. XXIV., under 19th October. 



