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



235 



of Chilao , which is very large , a,nd totally destroyed it 1 . These 

 tidings reached Rajii, who was much enraged at them, and 

 determined to press on that affair and finish it with all the risk 

 that he might run, and he commanded to prepare his troops 

 and elephants and engines, in order to make the last assault 

 on the Prea Cotta side : and the day before Rajti sent a letter 

 to the captain, in which he begged and counselled him to 

 deliver up to him the city of Cotta ; and he with the king's 

 baggage and artillery might pass freely to Columbo : and 

 that he should not insist on their all dying of hunger, because 

 he well knew the state in which he was through lack of pro- 

 visions ; regarding which he had already written to him 

 twice or thrice before, but this was with more liberality in the 

 offers. The captain replied to Raju, that as long as he heard 

 his drums beat, and these had skins and the shoes soles 

 for them to eat, they must sustain themselves inside the walls 

 of that fortress, as the king of Portugal had commanded 

 them ; however, after these were finished, and necessity 

 constrained them, that he would take care to go to his arrayal 

 to seek for provisions for his soldiers ; and that he reminded 

 him that it was not well for him to have such guests in his 

 house. 



Thus our people remained at the last extreme of life , without 

 having anything to eat, until the 11th of February [1565], which 

 was a Sunday ; when at three o'clock in the afternoon there 

 came a Chingala woman to the bastion of Prea Cotta and 

 called out to open to her, because she must speak with the 

 captain ; who ordered her to be brought in, and having been 



and as defeated left the field and retired to his territories. And as the 

 infidels consider us valiant, and, as they say, we cost them little to feed 

 they always put us in the forefront, and so Raju did to the renegades 

 that went in his company, of whom the greater part died in the battle : 

 those of Candea gave sepulture to their people ; those of the enemy 

 remained on the field. And as the island of Seilao is full of many 

 reptiles and wild beasts and vultures and other birds that devour human 

 flesh, all these fell upon the dead bodies, and in a very few days there 

 remained of the people of the country only the bones ; but not a thing 

 touched the accursed and excommunicated bodies of the renegade Portu- 

 guese soldiers, and so they remained entire, since neither wild beasts, 

 nor birds, nor reptiles cared to eat them, nor the earth itself to receive 

 them, at which even the heathens were amazed, going with their noses 

 stopped because of the great stench." 



1 This is the first mention by Couto of the " city " of Chilaw. The 

 " city " must have been rebuilt soon after the demolition here spoken 

 of, tor in X. x. xvi. infra (p. 377) we shall hear of its being again 

 destroyed by Manoel de Sousa Coutinho in 1588. 



