6 
History of Ceylon . . 
the island, and its valuable productions, made him turn his atten- 
tion to cultivating a closer connection with the natives ; and 
the difficulty which they felt in defending themselves against the 
attacks of the Arabs rendered them extremely willing to enter 
into an alliance with a people, whose daring enterprise and 
tremendous arms were so well calculated to strike terror into 
■their enemies. Almeyda, therefore, on being introduced to the 
King of Ceylon, had little difficulty in persuading him to pay 
an annual tribute to the Portuguese, on condition that they 
should protect his coasts from external invasion, with which 
he was then threatened by the Zamarin of Cochin on the 
Malabar coast, and a Rajah who reigned on that part of 
the Coromandel coast opposite to Ceylon. 
The situation in which Almeyda found the island was not 
essentially different from its present state, except in those 
changes which have been introduced into it by its successive 
European inmates. The inhabitants consisted of two distinct 
races of people. The savage Bedas then, as now, occupied the 
large forests, particularly in the northern parts ; the rest of 
the island was in possession of the Cinglese. The towns of 
the sea-coast were not as yet ravished from the latter people 
by foreign invaders ; and their king held his court at Columbo, 
which is now the European capital of Ceylon. Cinnamon 
was even then the principal product and the staple commodity 
of the island, as we find by the tribute paid by the king to 
the Portuguese, which consisted of two hundred and fifty 
thousand pounds weight of cinnamon. 
Such] are the few circumstances respecting Ceylon, which can 
be collected from the narratives of its first Portuguese visitors. 
The minds of these adventurers were too much occupied with 
