228 



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



[Vol. XX. 



passage being open to him, he might be able to enter it dryshod : 

 and to this end he ordered to collect a large number of pioneers, 

 whom he set to make a beginning with the work, a thing that 

 completed the hopelessness of our people. The soldiers that 

 were on that side, thirty in number, hearing the noise of the 

 work, fell upon the enemy, and killed a large number of the 

 pioneers, and captured from them a boat called a catapanel 1 ; 

 and Pedro de Atayde Inferno hastening to the help ordered 

 to be placed in it fifty firelock soldiers, with whom embarked 

 the father Frey Simao de Nasaret, a monk of St. Francis, 

 to animate and console them, who came to the place where the 

 enemy had begun to work and dig a trench, and with their 

 firelocks killed a large number of Moors, and filled in that 

 part again. 



Here occurred a most evident miracle, and this was, that 

 while our people were engaged in this work there enveloped 

 them a mist so dense, that it entirely hid them from the enemy, 

 the latter remaining so plainly visible to our people, that these 

 made the greatest havoc among them, killing with firelock 

 shots three hundred of them, who were straightway left there, 

 besides many that retired wounded. This lasted until midday, 

 when the filling in of that place was finished, and our people 

 retired without having received any loss, not even a slight 

 wound. This cost Raju so dear, that never more did he 

 care to prosecute that business 2 , and remained thus in that 

 position, preventing the passage of provisions to our people, 

 who being in entire lack of them, the captain ordered two of 

 the king's elephants to be killed 3 , with which they kept off 

 hunger for some days, and they did the same with a horse, and 

 after this our people fell upon the dogs and cats of the city, and 

 there escaped them not a single one, nor even other unclean 

 vermin of the country, so that they consumed everything. 



1 The manuscript has catapanol. Baldseus (Ceylon xxii.) has 

 katapanelen (plur.), which a marginal note explains as "open boats" 

 (the English translator substitutes " ferry-boats "). On p. 308 infra 

 we have the plural form catapunes , which shows that the word is Tamil 

 kattu-punai — tied-boat, and that catapanel (better catapunel) is an 

 artificial singular formed from the plural on the model of Portuguese 

 nouns. 



2 He might have renewed the attempt, however, had not the Portu- 

 guese abandoned Cotta the following year. We shall find him using 

 the most elaborate means for draining the Columbo lake during the 

 siege of 1587-8 (see infra, pp. 299-300). 



3 During the siege of Columbo by the Dutch in 1655-6, Ribeiro 

 tells us, of fifteen elephants that were in the city at the time all but one 

 were eaten (see C. A. S. Jl. xii. 94). 



