[Illustration:  Mount d’Ely, from the Sea, in last century.]

The state of Hili-Marawi is also mentioned in the Arabic work on the early history of the Mahomedans in Malabar, called Tuhfat-al-Mujahidin, and translated by Rowlandson; and as the Prince is there called Kolturee, this would seem to identify him either in family or person with the Raja of Cananor, for that old dynasty always bore the name of Kolatiri.[3]

The Ramusian version of Barbosa is very defective here, but in Stanley’s version (Hak.  Soc. East African and Malabar Coasts, p. 149) we find the topography in a passage from a Munich MS. clear enough:  “After passing this place” (the river of Nirapura or Nileshwaram) “along the coast is the mountain Dely (of Ely) on the edge of the sea; it is a round mountain, very lofty, in the midst of low land; all the ships of the Moors and Gentiles that navigate in this sea of India sight this mountain when coming from without, and make their reckoning by it; ... after this, at the foot of the mountain to the south, is a town called Marave, very ancient and well off, in which live Moors and Gentiles and Jews; these Jews are of the language of the country; it is a long time that they have dwelt in this place.”

(Stanley’s Correa, Hak.  Soc. pp. 145, 312-313; Gildem. p. 185; Elliot, I. 68; I.B. IV. 81; Conti, p. 6; Madras Journal, XIII.  No. 31, pp. 14, 99, 102, 104; De Barros, III. 9, cap. 6, and IV. 2, cap. 13; De Couto, IV. 5, cap. 4.)

NOTE 2.—­This is from Pauthier’s text, and the map with ch. xxi. illustrates the fact of the many wide rivers.  The G.T. has “a good river with a very good estuary” or mouth.  The latter word is in the G.T. faces, afterwards more correctly foces, equivalent to fauces.  We have seen that Ibn Batuta also speaks of the estuary or inlet at Hili.  It may have been either that immediately east of Mount d’Ely, communicating with Kavvayi and the Nileshwaram River, or the Madai River.  Neither could be entered by vessels now, but there have been great littoral changes.  The land joining Mt. d’Ely to the main is mere alluvium.

NOTE 3.—­Barbosa says that throughout the kingdom of Cananor the pepper was of excellent quality, though not in great quantity.  There was much ginger, not first-rate, which was called Hely from its growing about Mount d’Ely, with cardamoms (names of which, Ela in Sanskrit, Hel Persian, I have thought might be connected with that of the hill), mirobolans, cassia fistula, zerumbet, and zedoary.  The two last items are two species of curcuma, formerly in much demand as aromatics; the last is, I believe, the setewale of Chaucer:—­

  “There was eke wexing many a spice,
  As clowe gilofre and Licorice,
    Ginger and grein de Paradis,
  Canell and setewale of pris,
  And many a spice delitable
  To eaten when men rise from table.”—­R. of the Rose.