NO. 50.-1899.] SAMAN DEVALE MURAL STONE. 



101 



though Salvador Pereira is mentioned as leading an expedi- 

 tion against the Kandyan forces, we hear nothing of his rival 

 Pinhao, Had Couto lived to complete his twelfth Decade, 

 we should probably have had from his pen some more gra- 

 phic descriptions of engagements in which our hero took 

 a leading part ; but alas ! death put an end to the aged 

 chronicler's labours. And Antonio Bocarro, who in 1631 suc- 

 ceeded to the post so ably filled by Couto, when he under- 

 took the task of continuing the history of the Portuguese in 

 Asia, owing to an unfortunate misunderstanding* com- 

 menced his so-called "Decade 13" with the succession to the 

 viceroy alty of Dom Jeronymo deAzevedo in December, 1612, 

 thus leaving a gap of over twelve years, the events of which 

 have been chronicled very inadequately by Manoel de Faria y 

 Sousa.j Bocarro's " Decade " embraces only the five years of 

 Azevedo's viceroyalty (1613-1617), and he mentions Simao 

 Pinhao but once, and that somewhat casually. This solitary 

 instance occurs in chapter CXI., where he tells us that in 

 September, 1616, a few months after he had assumed the office 

 of Captain-General of Ceylon, Dom Nuno Alvares Pereira, 

 after a successful incursion into Harispattu — 



Ordered an attack to be made on that part of Sofragao and the 

 Two Corlas which had risen against us, whither he sent as Captain - 

 Major Filippe Oliveira of the Seven Corlas, with four companies, the 

 captains of which were Pedro Homem Serrao, Goncalo Mendes de 

 Carvalho, Simao Pinhao, Andre Penedo, and the same disava of 

 Sofragao| with his men. They went and found not a single enemy, 

 inasmuch as they were occupied over a great rising which they had 

 ordered of the whole Island, and so they burnt the villages that were 

 almost deserted, and proceeded destroying the land without having 

 any one to face them, nor even a sign of such a thing.§ 



* See his letter of August 19, 1631, to the king, printed on page xvii. of 

 the Lisbon Academy's edition of his work, where he says that he was told 

 that Couto had written as far as the time of Dom Jeronymo de Azevedo, 

 and that the Marquis of Castel Rodrigo had the manuscripts of some of 

 these books. — D. W. F. 



t Of. English translation in Monthly Lit. Reg., III., p. 282. — D. W. F. 



% Ohristovam Alvares de Almeida. — D. W. F. 



§ Bocarro then proceeds to describe the rising instigated by the pretender 

 44 Nicapety, " and the events arising therefrom, in great detail. See English 



