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



[Vol. XX. 



pots of powder, fire-bombs, and other contrivances and 

 materials, to go by the river and invest the tranqueira, and he 

 with all the army crossed over from the other side, leaving 

 orders for the foists to tow the castles until they were alongside 

 of the tranqueira. And the signal having been given at the 

 hour of attack, the foists began to row up the river with the 

 castles ; and when they were already near the tranqueira, they 

 fired upon them with a camello 1 , which struck the foist that 

 was in front in the prow, and the ball went tearing its way 

 through the middle of it as far as the poop, killing 

 more than twenty sailors whom it took in line who were 

 hauling at certain roqueiras 2 , and knocked them all to pieces. 

 Upon this the vessels stopped, and Dom Jorge ordered to 

 signal to them to turn about, which he also did, because he 

 knew that all that were in the castles were certain to have been 

 terrified by that mishap 3 . 



1 A kind of cannon. 



2 Petereros or stone-guns. 



3 The events recorded in this chapter and the next are described 

 differently and with some detail in the Rdjdvaliya (86-8), but the 

 Sinhalese chronicler has reversed the order of the engagements. He 

 begins with the curious statement (86) that " king Mayadunne died 

 after he had reigned 70 [!] years," and continues: — " On hearing of 

 king Mayadunne's death, king Dharmapala came out with the army of 

 Kotte and the Portuguese force, and halted at the place called Ma- 

 edanda. The next day they marched to the village Weragoda and 

 halted there." Valentyn (who, as I have said before, had a much 

 corrector version of the Rdjdvaliya) says {Ceylon 82): — " Hereupon the 

 Portuguese sent a famous captain, who encamped at the small pass of 

 Naclagam [Pass Nakolagama adjoins Weragoda], and from there slowly 

 pushed onwards, conquering all that opposed him. This happened at 

 a time when the king of Majadune, now grown very old, had 

 already given over the kingdom of Sita-vaca to his son Raja Singa, and 

 had placed him on the throne of Majadune." As a fact, we find from 

 both the Portuguese and the Sinhalese histories that Mayadunne now 

 falls into the background, Raja Sinha exercising authority and leading 

 the troops. {Gf. the statement of Cesare Federici quoted infra, p. 242, 

 note 4 .) I shall return to the subject of Mayadunne's death when 

 dealing with X. vn. xiii. (see p. 272, note 2 ). The affair described in the 

 concluding part of the above chapter is evidently the same as that 

 recorded on p. 88 of the Rdjdvaliya, where the employment of boats 

 is mentioned (see the original), though the object for their use is stated 

 differently. The incident of the firing of the gun (or two guns) at the 

 foist (called a kattala) and the killing of several sailors (kaldsis — see 

 Hob. -Job. s.v. " Classy ") is also related. According to this account, the 

 result was far worse for the Portuguese than Couto states. Valentyn 

 does not record this affair. 



