No. 60. — 1908.] cottto : history of Ceylon. 



297 



stronger than air the rest 1 . From the point of Sao Lourenco 

 to the point of the jail 2 , which is the bay where the ships 

 lie 3 , was stationed Manoel Gomes Rapouso ; and from the jail 

 to the old couraga*, which is that of the bastion of Sao Jorge 5 , 

 and from it to the new watch-tower 6 , all of which was protected 

 from the waves, he incharged to Diogo Gonsalves. 



Thus with the paucity of men that there was the city was 

 provided all round as best could be, the captain remaining 

 apart with fifty soldiers under his command to go and help 

 in all cases of need : and in order to obviate these he appointed 

 three counter-rounds to make the round of the city continually, 

 and to advise him of all that took place, and of what was 

 needed ; and because the lake was the most important thing 

 for the defence of the city, and from it most damage could be 

 caused to the enemy, the captain ordered to be put upon it a 

 galliot, of which he appointed as captain Manoel Pinto, a very 

 noble man and a worthy knight, with some companions, and 

 a foist besides, of which the captain was Antonio Coresma, 

 and a baloon 7 , in which he placed Antonio Mialheiro. (These 

 vessels with their falcons and bases did such damage to the 

 enemy in the war of the time of Manoel de Sousa, that Rajii, 

 exasperated by it, determined to drain the lake dry 8 .) 



And as there remained nothing to be done, he dispatched 

 Belchior Nogueira and Gonsalo Fernandes, each in his tone, 

 one to go to Goa to ask for succour, and the other to go giving 

 information from Manar to Cochim of the strait in which that 

 fortress was, in order that they might succour it. They set 

 out on the 12th of July ; and the day that they went out from 

 Columbo there pursued them some vessels of Raju's six leagues 



1 Of. C. A. -S. Jl. xii. 76. 



2 The jail is shown in Ressende's plan and in that given by Le Grand 

 in his translation of Ribeiro. It stood on the point where the brook 

 that traversed the city debouched into the sea, on the west side of the 

 stream. 



3 The " inner harbour " of pre-breakwater days. 



4 Perhaps the same as that described by Ribeiro as " a handsome 

 couraga in front of the college of the Company," and Saar's " bastion 

 Allegresse " (see C. A. S. Jl. xii. 77, 78). 



5 Probably Ribeiro's " bastion of the customhouse," and Saar's 

 " small bastion by name S. Vincenz" (see C. A. S. Jl. xii. 77, 78). By 

 a careless error the printed edition has " Sant-Iago." 



6 See supra, p. 283. 



7 A kind of rowing vessel (see Hob. -Job. s.v.). In Ceylon this word 

 is still current in the form " ballam " (from Tamil vaUam). 



s Sea supra, p. 293. 



