Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and Topographical with Notices of Its Natural History Part 107

[Footnote 1: Among the writers on India in the 14th century, A.D. 1323, was the Dominican missionary JOURDAIN CATALANI, or "Jordan de Severac,"

regarding whose t.i.tle of _Bishop of Colombo_, "Episcopus Columbensis,"

it is somewhat uncertain whether his see was in Ceylon, or at Coulam (Quilon), on the Malabar coast. The probability in favour of the latter is sustained by the fact of the very limited accounts of the island contained in his _Mirabilia_, a work in which he has recorded his observations on the Dekkan. _Cinnamon he describes as a production of Malabar_, and Ceylon he extols only for its gems, pre-eminent among which were two rubies, one worn by the king, suspended round his neck, and the other which, when grasped in the hand could not be covered, by the fingers, "Non credo mundum habere universum tales duo lapides, nec tanti pretii." The MS. of Fra. JORDa.n.u.s'S _Mirabilia_ has been printed in the _Recueil des Voyages_ of the Societe Geogr. of Paris, vol. i. p.

49. GIOVANNI DE MARIGNOLA, a Florentine and Legate of Clement VI., landed in Ceylon in 1349 A.D., at which time the legitimate king was driven away and the supreme power left in the hands of a eunuch whom he calls _Coja-Joan_, "pessimus Saracenus." The legate's attention was chiefly directed to "the mountain opposite Paradise."--DOBNER, _Monum.

Histor. Boemiae._ Pragae, 1764-85.

JOHN OF HESSE in his "Itinerary" (in which occurs the date A.D. 1398) says, "Adsunt et in quadam insula nomine Taprobanes viri crudelissimi et moribus asperi: permagnas habent aures, et illas plurimis gemmis ornare dic.u.n.tur. _Hi carnes humanas pro summis deliciis comedunt_."--JOHANNIS DE HESSE, Presbyteri _Itinerarium_, etc.]

[Footnote 2: _De Varietate Fortunae_, Basil, 1538. An admirable translation of the narrative of DI CONTI has recently been made by R.H.

Major, Esq., for the Hakluyt Society. London, 1857.]

Di Conti is, I believe, the first European who speaks of cinnamon as a production of Ceylon. "It is a tree," he says, "which grows there in abundance, and which very much resembles our thick willows, excepting that the branches do not grow upwards, but spread horizontally; the leaves are like those of the laurel, but somewhat larger; the bark of the branches is thinnest and best, that of the trunk thick and inferior in flavour. The fruit resembles the berries of the laurel; the Indians extract from it an odoriferous oil, and the wood, after the bark has been stripped from it, is used by them for fuel."[1]

[Footnote 1: POGGIO makes Nicolo di Conti say that the island contains a lake, in the middle of which is a city three miles in circ.u.mference; but this is evidently an amplification of his own, borrowed from the pa.s.sage in which Pliny (whom Poggio elsewhere quotes) alludes to the fabulous Lake Megisba.--PLINY, lib. vi. ch. xxiv.]

The narrative of Di Conti, as it is printed by Ramusio, from a Portuguese version, contains a pa.s.sage not found in Poggio, in which it is alleged that a river of Ceylon, called Arotan, has a fish somewhat like the torpedo, but whose touch, instead of electrifying, produces a fever so long as it is held in the hand, relief being instantaneous on letting it go.[1]

[Footnote 1: DI CONTI in _Ramusio_, vol. i. p. 344. There are two other Italian travellers of this century who touched at Ceylon; one a "GENTLEMAN OF FLORENCE," whose story is printed by Ramusio (but without the author's name), who accompanied Vasco de Gama, in the year 1479, in his voyage to Calicut, and who speaks of the trees "che fanno la canella in molta perfettione."--Vol. i. p. 120. The other is GIROLAMO DI SANTO STEFANO, a Genoese, who, in pursuit of commerce, made a journey to India which he described on his return in 1499, in a letter inserted by Ramusio in his collection of voyages. He stayed but one day in the island, and saw only its coco-nuts, jewels, and cinnamon.--Vol. i. p.

345.]

The sixteenth century was prolific in navigators, the accounts of whose adventures served to diffuse throughout Europe a general knowledge of Ceylon, at least as it was known superficially before the arrival of the Portuguese. Ludovico Barthema, or Varthema, a Bolognese[1], remained at a port on the west coast[2] for some days in 1506. The four kings of the island being busily engaged in civil war[3], he found it difficult to land, but he learned that permission to search for jewels at the foot of Adam's Peak might be obtained by the payment of five ducats, and restoring as a royalty all gems over ten carats. Fruit was delicious and abundant, especially artichokes and oranges[4], but rice was so insufficiently cultivated that the sovereigns of the island were dependent for their supplies upon the King of Narsingha, on the continent of India.[5] This statement of Barthema is without qualification; there can be little doubt that it applied chiefly to the southern parts of the island, and that the north was still able to produce food sufficient for the wants of the inhabitants.

[Footnote 1: _Itinerario de_ LUDOVICO DE VARTHEMA, _Bolognese, no lo Egypto, ne la Suria, ne la Arabia Deserta e Felice, ne la Persia, ne la India, e ne la, aethiopia--la fede el vivere e costume de tutte le prefatte provincie._ Roma. 1511, A.D.]

[Footnote 2: Probably Colombo.]

[Footnote 3: These conflicts and the actors in them are described in the _Rajavali_, p. 274.]

[Footnote 4: "Carzofoli megliori che li nostri, melangoli dolci, li megiiori credo, che siano nel mondo."--_Varthema_, pt. xxvii.]

[Footnote 5: "In questo paese non nasce riso; ma ne li viene da terra ferma. Li re de quella isola sono tributarii d'il re de Narsinga per repetto del riso."--_Itin_., pt. xxvii. See also BARBOSA, in _Ramusio_, vol. i p. 312.]

Barthema found the supply of cinnamon small, and so precarious that the cutting took place but once in three years. The Singhalese were at that time ignorant of 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 b.l.o.o.d.y." 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.

[Footnote 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."]

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[1], with which the people of Portugal had been brought into connection by their recent discovery of the pa.s.sage 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 Corsali[2], 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.

[Footnote 1: _Il Sommario delle Inde 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.]

[Footnote 2: Two letters written by ANDREA CORSALI, a Florentine, dated from Cochin, A.D. 1515, and addressed to the Grand Duke Julian de Medicis.]

Barbosa appears to have a.s.sociated 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 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 a.s.serted 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 princ.i.p.al riches of Ceylon. The cats-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 of fire.

[Footnote 1: CESARE DE FREDERICI, a Venetian merchant, whose travels in India, A.D. 1563, have been translated by HICk.o.c.kE, 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.]

The residence of the King was at "Colmucho" (Colombo), whither vessels coming for elephants, cinnamon, and gems brought fine cloths from Cambay, 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 pa.s.sage round the Cape of Good Hope. In the period which intervened the word _traveller_ may be said to have been synonymous with merchant[1], 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.

[Footnote 1: CaeSAR, FREDERICK opens the account of his wanderings in India, A.D. 1563, as follows:--"Having for the s.p.a.ce 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 t.i.tle of "_The Voyages and Travaile of M. Caesar 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 HICk.o.c.kE, 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]

[Footnote 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. viii. vol i. pp. 64, 83, 107, 137.]

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 Ba.s.sora became deserted; and on the sh.o.r.es 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.

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.