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



349 



that island and also those of Mai diva, by reason of the coir that was 

 obtained from them, which was the one essential for all the Indian 

 navigation, all the rigging being made of it, 2 he determined to 

 send his son Dom Lourenco on this enterprise, it being the mon- 

 soon weather for that passage. The latter took nine sail of those 

 that formed his armada ; and owing to the little knowledge that 

 our people had of that route, although they took with them some 

 natives, they were carried by the currents to the island of Ceilam, 

 which the ancients call Tapobrana, regarding which we shall give 

 a copious relation when we come to describe what Lopo Soarez did 

 there when he founded a fortress in one of its ports called 

 Columbo, 3 which is fourteen leagues above that of Gale, at 

 which Dom Lourenco made landfall, which is at the point of the 

 island, in which he found many ships of Moors, who were engaged 

 in loading cinnamon, and elephants for Cambaya, who, when they 

 saw themselves surrounded by our armada, in order to secure their 

 persons and property, pretended to desire peace with us, and 

 that the king of Ceilam had enjoined upon them that when they 

 crossed over to the coast of India they were to notify the viceroy 

 to send him some person to conclude peace and friendship with 

 the king of Portugal on account of his proximity to his captains 

 and the fortresses that they were making in India, and also because 

 of the cinnamon that was in that island of his and other wares, 

 which he could give him for the loading of his ships by way of trade. 

 As Dom Lourenco had set out to discover and capture the ships 

 of the Moors of Media which were sailing from the strait to Malaca 

 by that new route, and as by the cargo of elephants that these 

 had, as well as from other information that he received from the 

 native pilots that he carried, he knew them to be ships of Cambaya, 

 with which we were not at war, he did not wish to do them any 

 harm, and also because of arriving with an armed force at that 

 part where the Moors had spread the report that the Portuguese 

 were sea-pirates ; so he rather accepted what they offered on 

 behalf of the king. And by their means he got together some 

 of the people of the country, with whose approval he erected a 

 stone padram on a rock, and upon it ordered to be cut some letters 

 saying how he had arrived there, and had discovered that island ; 

 and Goncalo Goncalvez, who was the stone-cutter that did the 

 work, although he was not a Hercules to boast of the padrdes of 

 his discovery, because these were in a place of such renown, put 

 his name at the foot of it ; and so Gongalo Goncalvez remains 

 more truly the stone-cutter of that pillar than Hercules is the 

 author of many that the Greeks attribute to him in their writings. 

 When the Moors saw that Dom Lourenco trusted in the words 

 that they spoke to him on behalf of the king, they pretended to go 

 and come with messages to him, and finally brought four hundred 

 bahares of cinnamon of that which they had collected on shore for 

 loading, saying that the king in token of the peace and amity 

 which he desired to have with the king of Portugal, although it 

 had not been agreed to by his ambassadors, offered him all that 

 cinnamon to load his ships with, if he wished. And because Dom 

 Lourenco said that he wished to send a message to the king, they 



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