No. 60. — 1908.] barros : history of ceylon. 23 



of the island, in which he found many ships ofiVEoors, who were 

 engaged in loading cinnamon and elephants for Cambaya 1 , 

 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 en- 

 joined 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 thej 7 were making in India, and also because of the cinna- 

 mon 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 Mecha that 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 arriv- 

 ing with an armed force at that port, 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 coun- 

 try, with whose approval he erected a stone padram 2 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 

 Gongalvez, 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 Goncalo Gongalvez remains 

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

 author of many that the Greeks attributed to him in their 

 writings 3 . 



When the Moors saw that Dom Lourenco trusted in the 

 words that they spoke to him on behalf of the king, they pre- 

 tended to go and come with messages to him, and finally 

 brought four hundred bahdres 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 



1 See p. 21, note K 



2 Regarding this padrao see my paper cited, pp. 311-2. 



3 Barros alone gives these details. 



