36 



JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [VOL. XX. 



it would be much more fruitful and well supplied ; but through 

 fear of this they do not care to cultivate anything. 



Almost at the edge of this mountain range, a matter of 

 twenty leagues from the sea-coast, is a mountain 1 so high and 

 steep that it rises to the height of seven leagues 2 ; and on 

 the summit of it is a flat surface of such small extent in 

 circumference, that it will be little more than thirty paces 

 in diameter. In the middle of which is a stone of two cubits 

 higher than the other flat surface in the manner of a table, 

 and in the middle of it is figured a man's footprint, which will 

 have a length of two spans, the which footprint is held in great 

 reverence, on account of the opinion that prevails among the 

 natives; for they assert ifc to be that of a holy man, a native 

 of the kingdom of Delij, which is below the sources of the 

 rivers Indus and Ganges, who came to this island, where he 

 stayed for the space of many years, bringing men to the usage 

 of believing and adoring one only God, the creator of heaven 

 and earth, whom they call Deunu 3 , and afterwards returned 

 to the kingdom of Delij, where he had a wife and children. 

 And many years of his life having passed, in the hour of death 

 he extracted a tooth, and commanded that it should be brought 

 to this island, and given to the king of the country, to be 

 kept in memory of him, beside the footprint on the peak, the 

 which tooth at the present day the kings hold as a sacred 

 relic, to which they commit all their needs 4 . And from this 

 heathen opinion our people came to call this mountain the 

 Peak of Adam, whom they 5 call by the proper name of Budo. 

 In which mountain rise three or four rivers, which are the 

 principal ones that water the greater part of the island ; and 

 in some places this mountain range is so steep, that for the 

 space of thirty fathoms it is ascended by means of iron chains, 

 to which men cling, in order to make their pilgrimage to this 

 footprint. The which thing is so celebrated among all the 

 heathenry of that East, that from more than a thousand 

 leagues away there assemble there pilgrims, chiefly those that 

 they call jogues 6 , who are like men that have left the world 



1 Of. what follows with Couto V. vi. ii. (p. 108 ff.). 



2 An absurd figure ; perhaps Barros has confused the height with 

 the latitude, which is about 7* 15. (But c/. Couto's statement on p. 109.) 



3 Sinh. deviyanne. 



4 Cf. Couto VII. ix. ii. (p. 191). The manner in which Barros refers to 

 the tooth would seem to prove that when he wrote he had not learnt of 

 the capture of the relic in Jaffna and its destruction in G-oa in 1560 and 

 1561, as described by Couto in VII. ix. ii. and VII. IX. xvii. (pp. 191,213). 



6 The natives of Ceylon. 



6 See Hob.-Job. s.v. " Jogee," 



