[Footnote 1:  Taou-e che-le[)o], quoted in the Foreign Geography, b. xviii. p. 15.]

[Footnote 2:  The rapid peopling of Ceylon at a very remote age is accounted for in the following terms in a passage of MA-TWAN-LIN, as translated by M. Stanislas Julien;—­“Les habitants des autres royaumes entendirent parler de ce pays fortune; c’est pourquoi ils y accoururent a l’envi.”—­Journ.  Asiat. t. xxix. p. 42.]

[Footnote 3:  Records of the Ming Dynasty, by CHING-HEAOU, b. lxviii. p. 5.]

According to the Tung-teen, the intercourse between them and the Singhalese, began during the Eastern Tsin dynasty, A.D. 317—­419[1]; and one remarkable island still retains a name which is commemorative of their presence.  Salang, to the north of Penang, lay in the direct course of the Chinese junks on their way to and from Ceylon, through the Straits of Malacca, and, in addition to its harbour, was attractive from its valuable mines of tin.  Here the Chinese fleets called on both voyages; and the fact of their resort is indicated by the popular name “Ajung-Selan,” or “Junk-Ceylon;” by which the place is still known, Ajung, in the language of the Malays, being the term for “large shipping,” and Selan, their name for Ceylon.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Tung-teen, A.D. 740, b. clxxxviii. p. 17.]

[Footnote 2:  Sincapore Chronicle, 1836.]

The port in Ceylon which the Chinese vessels made their rendezvous, was
Lo-le (Galle), “where,” it is said, “ships anchor, and people land."[1]

[Footnote 1:  WANG-KE, Suh-wan-heen tung-kaou, b. ccxxxvi p. 19.]

Besides rice, the vegetable productions of the island enumerated by the various Chinese authorities were aloes-wood, sandal-wood[1], and ebony; camphor[2], areca-nuts, beans, sesamum, coco-nuts (and arrack distilled from the coco-nut palm) pepper, sugar-cane, myrrh, frankincense, oil and drugs.[3] An odoriferous extract, called by the Chinese Shoo-heang, is likewise particularised, but it is not possible now to identify it.

[Footnote 1:  The mention of sandal-wood is suggestive.  It does not, so far as I could ever learn, exist in Ceylon; yet it is mentioned with particular care amongst its exports in the Chinese books.  Can it be that, like the calamander, or Coromandel-wood, which is rapidly approaching extinction, sandal-wood was extirpated from the island by injudicious cutting, unaccompanied by any precautions for the reproduction of the tree?]

[Footnote 2:  Nan-she, b. lxxviii. p. 13.]

[Footnote 3:  Suh-Hung keen-luh, b. xlii. p. 52.]