[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 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 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 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 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 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.