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



239 



such great terror, that forthwith they fell into a panic of their 

 own accord : and we may piously believe that this old man 

 was the blessed and chaste Saint Joseph, who in that crisis 

 had accompanied his most holy spouse the most holy Virgin 

 Mary our Lady. 



Raj u, seeing the discomfiture of his forces, and that daylight 

 was already, breaking, removed from where he was, and 

 commanded to give a signal to the captains that were in the 

 other passes, who forthwith retired and went retreating in 

 disorder by different roads ; and Rajii, without taking 

 that to his arrayal, went retreating towards Ceitavaca : 

 and without doubt if Dom Diogo de Atayde and Jorge de 

 Mello had gone harassing him in the rear, they would have 

 succeeded in utterly routing him ; but they, when they learnt 

 of his flight, fearing that he had gone against Columbo, which 

 was left to itself, without communicating with Pedro de 

 Atayde set off in great haste to the help of their city. The 

 captain Pedro de Atayde, when he saw himself relieved, 

 threw out spies in order to get information regarding the 

 enemy, who had already crossed over the river Calane, and 

 went the round of all the posts, and found that not a soldier 

 had been killed in all that combat except one named Francisco 

 Fernandez Gameiro : upon which he went out to the field, and 

 saw that notable havoc that had been wrought among the 

 enemy, and found that the number of the dead exceeded two 

 thousand, besides a larger quantity that were wounded, of 

 whom manjr died ; and seeing that in the fortress there was 

 only enough to eat for that day, he ordered the soldiers to 

 collect the dead bodies, in order to salt them in slices, so that, 

 if the enemy returned, they might avail themselves of that 

 provender : and so in a short space of time they set aside and 

 reserved four, hundred of the fattest 1 ; and a mulatto called 

 Fernao Nunez then and there opened one and took out the 

 liver, which he roasted and ate. The father Frey Simao de 

 Nasareth, seeing those corpses being collected, hastened with 

 great alacrity and requested the captain not to collect the dead, 

 because it was a thing prohibited to Christians to eat human 

 flesh : to which Pedro de Atayde replied that in the extreme 

 need in which they were everything was permitted ; and whilst 

 they were thus debating, there came to the captain a Christian 

 Caffre, who had come from Raju's arrayal, and told him how 

 he had been routed, and had had a large number of men killed , 

 and that he had left him already in Seitavaca, upon which the 

 captain desisted from the carrion business that he had ordered 

 to be commenced, and commanded to set fire to all those corpses. 



Faria y Sousa wrongly says that the bodies were actually salted. 



