NO. 59. — 1907.] PORTUGUESE IN CEYLON. 



301 



question in the affirmative. But Barros gives no dates through- 

 out the chapter, which occurs as an isolated fragment of history, 

 unconnected with what precedes or follows it. Moreover, it is 

 very unlikely that an exploring expedition to the Maldives and 

 Ceylon would have been sent out in April, when the south- 

 west monsoon was due to set in in May.* Other and fatal 

 objections to this supposition will be mentioned below. We 

 may therefore consider it probable that April was spent by 

 Dom Lourengo in coastguard and convoy work. 



With the setting in of the south-west monsoon (or " winter,"! 

 as the Portuguese termed it) all sea traffic on the west coast 

 of India would practically cease for a period of three or four 

 months, so that no expedition could have left Cochin before 

 August at the earliest. The rainy months in Cochin were 

 spent, according to Castanheda (ii. c. xxviii.), in pushing on the 

 building of the fort, the foundations of which had been laid 

 some months before. J 



* Bar. distinctly says that the viceroy dispatched Dom Lourengo on 

 this expedition when it was " the monsoon weather for that passage " 

 (see B 9, infra). On this subject see further on (pp. 307-8). 



f See Hobson-Jobson under this word. 



J According to Cast. (ii. c. xviii.) the foundations had been secretly 

 laid by the factor Diogo Fernandes Correa before the arrival of the 

 viceroy ; but Cor. (i. 625-42) gives a long and circumstantial account 

 of how the viceroy gained the unwilling consent of the king of Cochin 

 to the erection of a fortress, and describes how the viceroy with great 

 ceremony turned the first shovelful on 3 May 1506. Cor. gave a 

 drawing of the fortress (which has perished with the original manuscript 

 of his first volume), and says that the completion of the work was 

 effected with great difficulty, owing to its being " a winter of many 

 rains and tempests." Whatever truth there may be in Correa's account, 

 his date, at least, is quite wrong, for from Gaspar Pereira's letter 

 already cited we learn that in December 1505 the building of the fort 

 was actively proceeding, the viceroy and all the captains and fidalgos 

 taking their share in the manual labour (Cartas de Aff. de Alb. ii. 355). 

 When the fortress was finished, I do not know ; but it was not by the 

 end of 1506, for in the summary of the viceroy's letter of 27 December 

 1506, where the various forts are referred to, we read : " That of Cochy 

 iii c finished," where " iii° " evidently stands for tres coartos = three- 

 fourths, though the editors of the Cartas interpret it as " three hundred," 

 which is unintelligible (Cartas de Aff. de Alb. ii. 395). It was prob- 

 ably completed in 1507 (seethe viceroy's letter in Cor. i. 908). Correa's 

 account of the completion (i. 641-42) is either fiction or is amachronoue. 



c 2 



