No. 60. — 1908.] couto : history of ceylon. 



229 



Those of our people that were in the bastion of the land pass , 

 seeing themselves in extreme need, sent some servants into 

 the jungle to cut wood and gather some herbs to eat : these 

 learnt that there were many of the enemy with several elephants 

 concealed in the thicket near a tree that stinks like human 

 ordure, and so remedial for the palsy, that in a short space 

 of time it has great effects when bruised and plastered on the 

 injured parts : and in my own house this was tried many a 

 time ; and although there are also of these trees in the 

 districts adjacent to Goa yet that of Ceilam has more virtue 1 . 

 Of these troops the servants informed the captain, who 

 sallied forth from Cotta with eighty soldiers 2 , and went and 

 took up his position in the old ditch, which had only one 

 single passage, very narrow, and on both sides was very 

 marshy, whereby the position was a very strong one, and 

 safe against all the forces that might come. Thence he sent 

 Balthesar Pesanha with thirty soldiers to go through the 

 jungle to discover the enemy ; and at a firelock shot's distance 

 he came upon the whole of Raju's force, which was lying in 

 ambush, with the object of capturing our bastion that lay on 

 that side, because of its being the most important of the whole 

 of Cotta. Our people who were in the midst of that multitude 

 of foes retreated towards the captain, the enemy following hard 

 after them, harassing them with their harquebusery, and 

 reached the captain with one soldier missing, named Antonio 

 Martins, a native of Arronchez, a very good horseman ; and 

 when they got back to the ditch they were already so hard 

 pressed by the enemy that these had almost entered together 

 with them. On seeing this, our soldiers, without the captain's 

 order, sallied forth upon them with an amazing fury, and 

 falling upon the enemy they caused great havoc among them ; 

 and although those that sallied forth upon them were not 

 more than eight, they went driving them before them like 

 sheep as far as the main body of the army, whence they returned 

 in very good order ; but not so scatheless but that all were 



: From Couto's description, one would suppose that the tree meant 

 was Celtis cinnamomea (called by the Sinhalese gurenda, from the dis- 

 gusting odour of its wood when fresh), were it not that this tree does 

 not, apparently, grow under 2,000 feet in Ceylon, nor is it found on 

 the west of India (see Trimen's Handbook of the Flora of Ceylon iv. 

 81). On the other hand, Clerodendron inerme (the wal-gurenda of the 

 Sinhalese), which is very common on the sea-shore in Ceylon and India, 

 is not a tree but a shrub (see Trimen, op. cit. iii. 359-60). 



2 Through a strange misinterpretation of Couto's words, Faria y 

 Sousa states that Pedro de Ataide's object was to capture the elephants 

 — apparently for food I 



