A misapprehension of this passage has been admitted into the English version of the Voyages of the two Mahometans which is published in PINKERTON’S Collections of Voyages and Travels, vol. iii.; the translator having treated gobb as a term applicable to valleys in general.  “Ceylon,” he says, “contains valleys of great length, which extend to the sea, and here travellers repair for two months or more, in which one is called Gobb Serendib, allured by the beauty of the scenery, chequered with groves and plains, water and meadows, and blessed by a balmy air.  The valley opens to the sea, and is transcendently pleasant.”—­PINKERTON’S Voyages, vol. vii. p. 218.

But a passage in Edrisi, while it agrees with the terms of Abou-zeyd, explains at the same time that these gobbs were not valleys converted into gardens, to which the seamen resorted for pleasure to spend two or three months, but the embouchures of rivers flowing between banks, covered with gardens and forests, into which mariners were accustomed to conduct their vessels for more secure navigation, and in which they were subjected to detention for the period stated.  The passage is as follows in Jaubert’s translation of Edrisi, tom. i. p. 73:—­“Cette ile (Serendib) depend des terres de l’Inde; ainsi que les vallees (in orig. aghbab) par lesquelles se dechargent les rivieres, et qu’on nomme ‘Vallees de Serendib.’  Les navires y mouillent, et les navigateurs y passent un mois ou deux dans l’abondance et dans les plaisirs.”

It is observable that Ptolemy, in enumerating the ports and harbours of Ceylon, maintains a distinction between the ordinary bays, [Greek:  kolpos], of which he specifies two corresponding to those of Colombo and Trincomalie, and the shallower indentations, [Greek:  limen], of which he enumerates five, the positions of which go far to identify them with the remarkable estuaries or gobbs, on the eastern and western coast between Batticaloa and Calpentyn.

To the present day these latter gulfs are navigable for small craft.  On the eastern side of the island one of them forms the harbour of Batticaloa, and on the western those of Chilaw and Negombo are bays of this class.  Through the latter a continuous navigation has been completed by means of short connecting canals, and a traffic is maintained during the south-west monsoon, from Caltura to the north of Chilaw, a distance of upwards of eighty miles, by means of craft which navigate these shallow channels.

These narrow passages conform in every particular to the description given by Abou-zeyd and Edrisi:  they run through a succession of woods and gardens; and as a leading wind is indispensable for their navigation, the period named by the Arabian geographers for their passage is perhaps not excessive during calms or adverse winds.