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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. XX. 



immediately called a council of the captains, and before them 

 all heard once more the French captain's report. Having all 

 heard this, they voted that they ought at once to retire, as 

 they were thirty leagues within the heart of the island, and 

 many narrow and difficult passes had to be passed through ; 

 and that if that king should attack them they had not sufficient 

 forces to fight him. With this resolution they at once raised 

 the camp and retired in great haste but in very good order. 



In the morning the king of Candea received word of their 

 retreat, and sallying forth with all his army he followed after 

 them by devious roads, and getting in front waited for them 

 in some very narrow and difficult passes ; and attacking them 

 in those narrows where our men could not turn round, they 

 continued shooting them down with firelocks and arrows, 

 without our people's having any shelter or defence. Dom 

 Jorge de Crasto and the fidalgos and captains were unable to 

 govern their men, because as they all went in single file and 

 broken up, and at a great distance one from the other, they 

 could not help them, nor had they any to do the same for them, 

 they running the same risk, and being all of them wounded. 

 Thus they proceeded fighting until they got out of the terri- 

 tories of Candea, where they got quit of them, seven hundred 

 men having been killed and lost in those jungles, among whom 

 were four hundred Portuguese, the rest being native Chris- 

 tians and people of Cota ; and all the others that escaped 

 suffering from many wounds 1 . And as they went marching 

 through the territories of Madune, there came out to meet them 

 a modeliar of his with five hundred men, and informed Dom 

 Jorge de Crasto that Madune begged them to come to Ceita- 

 vaca, and was waiting to give him everything needful 2 . 



1 This was the first of many such disastrous expeditions of the Portu- 

 guese. In Primor e Honra, pt. iv. cap. 1 (108-9) the author says : — 

 " Women gave their lives to many Portuguese who escaped from the 

 rout of Dom Jorge de Castro in the island of Seylao in the kingdom of 

 Candea, where there were some who to save the Portuguese from death 

 offered themselves thereto." The writer may have been one of those 

 that accompanied the expedition. Curiously enough, Couto, who has 

 given us the foregoing details regarding Jayavira which the Rajavaliya 

 omits, now drops all further reference to that king, and not until 1565 

 do we hear of Kandy again, when Jayavira's son was reigning (see pp. 

 233-4). Jayavira's expulsion from Kandy by his son, and his reception 

 as a'fefugee by Mayadunne, are recorded by the Rjdvaliya (82) ; but 

 when these occurred, and when he died, does not appear. 



2 Correa tells a similar story in connection with the retreat of Antonio 

 Moniz Barreto in 1547, which he has probably confused with this one 

 (see C. Lit. Reg, iii. 253). 



