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JOURNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). 



[Vol. XXI. 



3. His Excellency the Governor : — Ladies and Gentlemen, 

 I will now call upon Mr. P. E. Pieris to read his Paper " Portu- 

 guese Ceylon at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century." It is 

 unnecessary for me to speak at any length about Mr. Pieris. All 

 of you know that this subject of the Portuguese in Ceylon has 

 been studied by him for some considerable time, and that he is 

 one of our best authorities on the subject. 



4. Mr. P. E. Pieris said that the Paper was exactly what it 

 purported to be — merely a sketch. It was a sketch of the period 

 from 1604 to 1614, a period that had not been touched upon by any 

 English writers. The four volumes of tho Documentos Remittidos 

 contained about a thousand letters in four volumes of two thousand 

 pages, and about eighty of these referred to Ceylon, and these 

 references were of considerable and minute interest to them in 

 Ceylon. Three or four of these letters have been already translated 

 and published by Mr. Donald Ferguson. His Excellency knew 

 very well the conditions under which Public Servants had to 

 work in Ceylon, and he had only his half -hours after dinner and 

 on Sunday mornings to attend to that Paper. There might be 

 mistakes — no doubt there were — but he had tried conscientiously 

 to put before them matters of interest in which they were 

 concerned. 



Portugal itself was at that time in a peculiar condition ; the great 

 house of Aviz was extinct, and about the year 1580 Philip II. of 

 Spain, the husband of Queen Mary of England, had been elected 

 King of Portugal, and the letters with which they were dealing 

 were written by his successor, Philip III. of Spain and II. of 

 Portugal. 



The Paper was then read by Mr. Pieris. 



