[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 title 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. JORDANUS’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 dicuntur. 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 circumference; but this is evidently an amplification of his own, borrowed from the passage 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 passage 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]