No. 60. — 1908.] bakros : history of ceylon. 35 



long ago have come upon it. Of spicery, besides cinnamon, 

 of which it is the mother (as we have said), it has pepper, 

 cardamom, brazil 1 , and several dyes that the natives use for 

 dyeing their cloths : of these, some are roots, others wood, 

 and others leaves and flowers. It has large palm groves, 

 which is the best inheritance of those parts ; because, beside 

 its fruits being the common food, these palms are profitable 

 for divers uses, of which food, called coco, there is here great 

 loading for many parts . Its elephants , of which a good number 

 are bred, are those with the best instinct in the whole of India, 

 and because they are notably the most tamable and handsomest 

 they are worth much 2 ; and there is much breeding of cattle 

 and buffaloes, from which is made a large quantity of butter, 

 which is carried as cargo to many parts 3 . It has much rice, 

 principally in a district that lies on the side of the island that 

 faces the east, called Calou, that is, "kingdom," by reason of 

 which rice, which they call bate, the kingdom is called Batecalou, 

 which they interpret as " the kingdom of rice " 4 . In fine, in 

 native fruits and seeds, as well as in foreign ones that are planted 

 and sown there, it is so fertile, that it seems as if Nature had 

 made of it a watered orchard 5 , because there is not a month 

 of the year that it does not rain there 6 , and the sea-coast is 

 largely marshy, and cut up by rivers, some of them of fresh 

 water, which descend from the midst of the mountain ranges 

 of the interior, and others in the manner of salt marshes 

 formed by the sea. The which mountain ranges are almost 

 of the oval fashion of the island itself, arranged in such manner 

 that they appear like a pen [curral\ of loose stones, because in 

 the middle they leave the land flat without those peaks and 

 ruggedness that this circuit of mountains has. Not that they 

 are so bare that they have no trees on them, because among 

 those rocks and peaks the whole is filled up with trees of many 

 kinds ; and by three or four parts, after the manner of the 

 passes in the Alps of Italy, one enters within this circuit, 

 which is a kingdom called Cande. And if its kings did not 

 constitute themselves the heirs of their vassals, taking from 

 them all the property that they possess at the hour of death, 

 of which, if they choose, they give some things to the children, 



1 Meaning sapanwood (see Hob.-Job. s.v. " Brazilwood "). 



2 Cf. Couto V. i. vii. (pp. 85-6). 



3 Cf. III. in. vii. (p. 47). The " butter " was really ghee. 



4 This is one of the most amusing of Barros's etymological atro- 

 cities. Of course, Srnh. bat is boiled rice ; and neither in Sioh. nor in 

 Tarn, is there a word like calou meaning " kingdom," 



5 Cf. Couto V. vi. ii. (p. 117). 



6 Cf. Couto X. x. xi. (p. 359), 



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