the use of gunpowder 1, and their arms were swords and lance-heads mounted on shafts of bamboo; "with these they fought, but their battles were not bloody." The Moors were in possession of the trade, and the king sent a message to Varthema and his companions, expressive of his desire to purchase their commodities; but in consequence of a hint that payment would be regulated by the royal discretion, the Italians weighed anchor at nightfall and bade a sudden adieu to Ceylon. Early in the sixteenth century, ODOARDO BARBOSA, a Portuguese captain, who had sailed in the Indian seas, compiled a summary of all that was then known concerning the countries of the East', with which the people of Portugal had been brought into connection by their recent discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. Writing partly from personal observation, but chiefly from information obtained from the previous accounts of Di Conti, Barthema and Corsali3, he speaks of that "grandest and most lovely island, which the Moors of Arabia, Persia, and Syria call Zeilam, but the Indians, Tenarisim, or the land of delights." Its ports were crowded with Moors, who monopolised commerce, and its inhabitants, whose complexions were fair and their stature robust and stately, were altogether devoted to pleasure and indifferent to arms. Barbosa appears to have associated chiefly with the Moors whose character and customs he describes almost as they exist at the present day. He speaks of their heads, covered with the finest handkerchiefs; of their ear-rings, so heavy with jewels that they hang down to 1 The Rajavali, p. 279, describes the wonder of the Singhalese on witnessing for the first time the discharge of a cannon by the Portuguese who had landed at Colombo, A. D., 1517. "A ball shot from one of them, after flying some leagues, will break a castle of marble, or even of iron." 2 Il Sommario delle Indie Orientale di ODOARDO BARBOSA, Lisbon, 1519. A sketch of the life of BARBOSA is given in CRAWFURD'S Dictionary of the Indian Islands, p. 39. 3 Two letters written by ANDREA CORSALI, a Florentine, dated from Cochin, A. D. 1515, and addressed to the Grand Duke Julian de Medicis. their shoulders; of the upper parts of their bodies exposed, but the lower portions enveloped in silks and rich cloths, secured by an embroidered girdle. He describes their language as a mixture of Arabic and Malabar, and states that numbers of their co-religionists from the Indian coast resorted constantly to Ceylon, and established themselves there as traders, attracted by the delights of the climate, and the luxury and abundance of the island, but above all by the unlimited freedom which they enjoyed under its government. The duration of life was longer in Ceylon than in any country of India. With a profusion of fruits of every kind, and of animals fit for food, grain alone was deficient; rice was largely imported from the Coromandel coast, and sugar from Bengal. Di Conti and Barthema had ascertained the existence of cinnamon as a production of the island, but Barbosa was the first European who asserted its superiority over that of all other countries. Elephants captured by order of the King, were tamed, trained, and sold to the princes of India, whose agents arrived annually in quest of them. The pearls of Manaar and the gems of Adam's Peak were the principal riches of Ceylon. The cat's-eye, according to Barbosa, was as highly valued as the ruby by the dealers in India; and the rubies themselves were preferred to those of Pegu on account of their density 1; but, compared with those of Ava, they were inferior in colour, a defect which the Moors were skilled in correcting by the application of fire. The residence of the King was at "Colmucho" (Colombo), whither vessels coming for elephants, cinnamon, and gems brought fine cloths from Cambay, 1 CESARE DE FREDERICI, a Venetian merchant, whose travels in India, A. D. 1563, have been translated by HICKOCKE, says of Zeilan, that, "they find there some rubies, but I have sold rubies well there that I brought with me from Pegu." - In Hakluyt, vol. i. p. 226. together with saffron, coral, quicksilver, vermilion, and specie, and above all silver, which was more in demand than all the rest. Such is the sum of intelligence concerning Ceylon recorded by the Genoese and Venetians during the three centuries in which they were conversant with the commerce of India. Their interest in the island had been rendered paramount by the events of the first Crusades, but it was extinguished by the discovery of the passage round the Cape of Good Hope. In the period which intervened the word traveller may be said to have been synonymous with merchant', and when the occupation of the latter was withdrawn, the adventures of the other were suspended. The vessels of the strangers, in a very few years after their first appearance in the Indian seas, began to divert from its accustomed channel, the stream of commerce which for so many ages had flowed in the direction of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf; and the galleons of Portugal superseded the caravans of Arabia and the argosies of Venice. 1 CESAR FREDERICK opens the account of his wanderings in India, A.D. 1563, as follows:-"Having for the space of eighteen years continually coasted and travelled in many countries beyond the Indies, wherein I have had both good and ill success in my travels," &c. He may be regarded as the last of the merchant voyagers of Venice. His book was translated into English almost simultaneously with its appearance in Italian, under the title of "The Voyages and Travaile of M. Cæsar Fredrick, Merchant of Venice, into the East Indies, and beyond the Indies, written at sea, in the Hercules of London, the 25th March, 1588, and translated out of Italian by Mr. THOMAS HICKOCKE, Lond., 4to. 1588." The author, who left Venice in 1563, crossed over from Cape Comorin to Chilaw, to be present at the fishery of pearls, which he describes almost as it is practised at the present time. The divers engaged in it were all Christians (see Christianity in Ceylon, ch. i. p. 11), under the care of friars of the order of St. Paul. Colombo was then a hold of the Portuguese, but without "walles or enemies;" and thence "to see how they gather the sinnamon, or take it from the tree that it groweth on (because the time that I was there, was the season that they gather it, in the moneth of Aprill) I, to satisfie my desire, went into a wood three miles from the citie, although in great danger, the Portugals being in arms, and in the field with the king of the country." Here he gives with great accuracy the particulars of the process of peeling cinnamon, as it is still practised by the Chalias. In his dismay the Sultan of Egypt threatened to demolish the sacred remains of Jerusalem, should the infidels of Europe persist in annihilating the trade of the Desert. Stimulated by the Doge, he attacked the Portuguese merchantmen in the Indian seas, and destroyed a convoy off the coast of Cochin; an outrage for which Albuquerque meditated a splendid revenge by an expedition to plunder Mecca and Medina, and to consummate the desolation of Egypt by diverting the Nile to the Red Sea, across Nubia or Abyssinia! 1 But the catastrophe was inevitable; the rich freights of India and China were carried round the "Cape of Storms," and no longer slowly borne on the Tigris and the Nile. The harbours of Ormus and of Bassora became deserted; and on the shores of Asia Minor, where the commerce of Italy had intrenched itself in castles of almost feudal pretension, the rivalries of Genoa and Venice were extinguished in the same calamitous decay. 1 DARU, Hist. de Venise, lib. xix. p. 114. RAYNAL, Hist. des Deux Indes, vol. i. p. 156. FARIA Y Souza, Portug. Asia, pt. i. ch. vii vol. i. p. 64, 83, 107, 137. END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. |