308 An Account of the Harbour of Tuticoreen. [Oct. 



for trial on the cool tops of the hills and interior valleys, potatoes and 

 European vegetables, for ships' crews, as well as for exportation. Such 

 changes as these are not of course to be effected on a sudden, or even 

 in a few years, because the demand must first be established, but there 

 can be no impropriety in showing what may be expected to result, 

 should the demand arise by Tuticoreen becoming a port of considerable 

 resort for European ships, in which case, coffee and potatoes would 

 prove most valuable crops, and might, with perhaps many others, be 

 produced to an unlimited extent. 



Palamcottah, 2d August 1836. 



The accompanying chart and subjoined directions for making the Har- 

 bour were communicated by Lieut. Jenkins of the 33d Regiment N. I., 

 who verified all the bearings and soundings himself, and is well assured 

 of their correctness, especially the former, as he had them recently 

 compared by the Captain of the Peru, now taking in a cargo of cotton 

 there. 



" Vessels bound to Tuticoreen during theN.E. monsoon, will findsome 

 difficulty in beating up the gulph, particularly along the Tinnevelly coast, 

 as a strong current (at about five knots an hour) sets round point Mana- 

 paud. Captain Bleasdale, in the Robert Quayle, bound to the above 

 port in the month of November 1835, from his former experience on 

 the coast, tried whether beating up the Ceylon coast would not be pre- 

 ferable, and found it fully to answer his expectations. 



" He, on rounding Cape Comorin, sailed across the gulph, then, hug- 

 ging the Ceylon coast, beat up till nearly in the parallel of latitude of 

 Tuticoreen, and then stood across. 



" In sailing along the Tinnevelly coast, I am given to understand that 

 there is no danger to be apprehended, provided ships do not run under 

 seven fathoms. 



" In making the port of Tuticoreen, Horsburgh mentions, I think, that 

 there are some store rooms and houses on the islands. These houses 

 have now no existence, and the only ones to be seen are those in the 

 town of Tuticoreen; except a tower, as a land-mark on one of the 

 islands. 



" The best plan, and the one recommended by the pilots of the port, is 

 to beat up till you get two red hills (about fifteen miles off) in one. 

 Then stand in, keeping the tower on the island nearly in one with a 

 cotton godown, a conspicuous large building, the southernmost in 

 Tuticoreen, consequently the town will be open to the north of the 

 tower ; then anchor in five fathoms, gravel. Tower bearing W. % N., 

 church on Vaunthvoo Island N. * palmyra trees on Pandien Island 

 S. W. | W. 



