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



53 



of our men in them, they gave them the opportunity of making 

 themselves masters of the bastions, Antonio de Lemos during 

 this time having his galley covered with arrows and bolts, 

 n from which he received much damage. The body of men that 

 was further back in the arrayal, and also that which was 

 lodged in the city, which was the principal one, seeing 

 that these two bastions had been entered by us, and the 

 great confusion that was caused by the sauve qui pent, the 

 captains hastened from all parts, whereby was formed a large 

 number of men, among whom were included one hundred and 

 fifty horse, which for that island of Ceilam, where they are not 

 much used, was a great quantity 1 ; and there also came some 

 twenty-five elephants 2 , equipped with their castles, from 

 which fought many men with arrows. Four of these, as more 

 skilled in the use of warfare, came in front making great sweeps 

 with certain swords that they carried fastened backwards to 

 their tusks 3 . The which spectacle of wild beasts, coming 

 accompanied by so great a force of men, put our men into such 

 confusion, that many gave ground. Lopo de Brito, having 

 rallied all the men to him before those wild beasts had entirely 

 driven them back, all the matchlockmen that he had with him 

 at the same time firing at the four front elephants, shouted 

 the " Santiago ! " at them, and with their spears fixed wounded 

 them severely. These , when they found themselves annoyed 

 by the matchlocks and spears, wheeled round trumpeting upon 

 their own people, fleeing so blindly, that they charged into 

 those that were coming behind, and these into others, in such 

 wise that their rout gave the greater boldness to our men, 

 who drove them before them with loud shouts at the spear 

 point. And since there was not in the bodies of the Moors and 

 heathens of the island such hardness as in the hides of the 

 elephants, upon which, when they are enraged, the point of a 

 spear has no more effect than that caused by the spike of a 

 goad on the hide of an ox when it is pricked, that action left 

 them dead and wounded. Lopo de Brito having traversed 

 a broad street, by which these people had come, as soon as he 

 began to get among trees turned round and retired, fearing the 

 lie of the land, and contented himself with the victory that 

 God had given him, which had also cost enough of our men's 

 blood. However, the result of this affair was that the king 



1 This is the only instance mentioned by the Portuguese historian 

 of the use of horses in war by the Sinhalese , and I doubt if the horsemen 

 in this case were natives of Ceylon. 



2 Here we have war elephants mentioned for the first time. We shall 

 read much of them later. 



3 Cf. Varth. 127. 



