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



265 



he proceeded to carry on the war against Rajii with much 

 vigour ; and having received information that there had put 

 in to the port of Belegao 1 three pardos of Malavares filled with 

 many prizes that they had made that summer on the coast 

 of Negapatam, he dispatched Ambrosio Leitao 2 as captain- 

 major of four ships with orders to go and capture them in the 

 same river 3 . These ships having set out 4 , a few days after- 

 wards there arrived D. Jeronimo Mascarenhas 5 with his armada 

 at the port of Columbo, and Joao Correa de Brito begged him 

 for some more ships to go and join Ambrosio Leitao, so that the 

 pardos might not escape him. D. Jeronimo left him Pedro 

 Homem Pereira 6 in his galley, and the galliot of Joao Rodri- 

 gues de Carvalho, and he himself departed for Goa. Joao 

 Correa, in addition to these vessels, ordered others to be hired 

 on land, although small ones, and ordered to embark in them 

 the ar aches Manoel Pereira and Domingos Fernandes with two 

 hundred lascarins, and gave instructions to Pedro Homem 

 Pereira to enter the river of Balagao 7 and capture the par das 

 and burn the town. 



These ships having arrived at the point of Balangale 8 , they 

 encountered Ambrosio Leitao ; and all uniting , they went and 

 anchored at the mouth of the river where the pardos were, and 

 there they arranged that all the Portuguese should disembark 

 at one place and the ar aches at another, in order to divert the 

 enemy and to render their disembarkation easier : and so they 



been given to him some years before on the marriage of a daughter, 

 and the habit of Christ with a good salary ; and as was known after- 

 wards he came in the second succession to the government of India, 

 to which he soon succeeded by the death of the viceroy Dom Duarte, 

 as we shall tell in. its place, a thing that has happened but a few times 

 in India." Manoel de Sousa arrived in India in September 1586 ; 

 but whether he took up the captaincy of Bacaim does not appear 

 (cf. infra, pp. 353, 354). His succession to the government of India 

 Couto recorded in his Eleventh Decade, which is lost. 



1 The printed edition has " Baligao." The usual form is " Beligao." 



2 We shall meet with this man again later on (see pp. 269, 367, 384). 



3 The Polwatte-oya, which disembogues into Weligama bay, or the 

 bay itself, which the Portuguese considered the mouth of the river. 



4 Apparently in January 1584 (see next note). 



5 From Malacca, whence he had sailed probably at the beginning of 

 January 1584. 



6 This man was afterwards (1591-4) captain of Columbo (see infra, 

 p. 394, note 3 ). 



7 Sic in manuscript and printed edition. 



8 The manuscript has " Balagate " ! (see Hob.-Job. s.v. " Bala- 

 ghaut "). Evidently Paragala point near Mirissa is meant. 



