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



[Vol. XX 



concealed from the Portuguese to the king of Pegu, who received 

 it with the greatest festivities that can be imagined, of which 

 with the divine favour we shall give a fuller account further on 

 in the Eighth Decade 1 ; and that king sent him a fine ship 

 laden with provisions and other things as a present with the 

 ship and all that was in it : and so they assured the viceroy 

 that that king would give for that tooth a great treasure. 



Dec. VII., Bk. ix., Chap, iii 



Of how the viceroy Dom Constantino went against the fortress 

 where the king ivas, and found it abandoned, and sent 

 some captains in pursuit of the king : and of the extremity 

 in which they placed him, until they came to join battle. 



The viceroy Dom Constantino, seeing himself master of the 

 city, and learning from spies that the king had betaken 

 himself to a fortress a league and a half from there, determined 

 to go and attack him, but first he arranged various matters. 

 And among these was to send to the neighbouring villages 

 royal safeguards and to issue proclamations, to the effect that 

 the natives might bring him the provisions they had, for 

 which he would pay them very well ; and that the inhabitants 

 of the city should come and live in their houses, and he would 

 do them all the favours and give them all the liberties they 

 desired : upon which they began to come in, and the villagers 

 to bring fowls, chickens, butter, figs 2 , and many other things 

 in great abundance. And because rice was wanting, he 

 immediately dispatched a vessel with letters to Joao Fernan- 

 dez Correa 3 , captain of Negapatao, in which he begged him to 

 help him with all the rice he could; and he gave orders to 

 collect all the vessels that there were in the country and on that 

 coast, which were a very great number, and sent them to Sao 

 Thome to embark therein the inhabitants of that town 4 , to 

 whom he once more wrote very flattering letters, n which he 

 begged and prayed them to come over to that kingdom, where 

 they would live full-fed, rich, and free from the alarms that they 

 suffered every day there ; and he would divide amongst all of 



1 See VIII. xii.-xiii. (pp. 243-53). 



2 That is, plantains, which the Portuguese cailed "figs of India" 

 (see Hob.- Job. s.v. " Plantain"). 



3 See supra, p. 96. 



1 See supra, pp. 180, 184. 



