This Island Was The Taprobana Of The Ancients,
And Not Sumatra As Some Have Imagined.
Its productions are numerous and
valuable:
Cinnamon of greatly finer quality than in any other place;
rubies, sapphires, and other precious stones; much pepper and cardamoms,
Brazil wood, and other dyes, great woods of palm-trees, numbers of
elephants which are more docile than those of other countries, and
abundance of cattle. It has many good ports, and several rivers of
excellent water. The mountains are covered with pleasant woods. One of
these mountains, which rises for the space of seven leagues, has a
circular plain on the top of about thirty paces diameter, in the middle
of which is a smooth rock about six spans high, upon which is the print
of a man's foot about two spans in length. This footstep is held in
great veneration, being supposed to have been impressed there by a holy
man from Delhi, who lived many years on that mountain, teaching the
inhabitants the belief in the one only God. This person returned
afterwards to his own country, whence he sent one of his teeth to the
king of the island as a token of remembrance, and it is still preserved
as a holy relick, on which they repose much confidence in time of
danger, and many pilgrims resort thither from places a thousand miles
distant. The island is divided into nine kingdoms, Columbo on the west
being the chief of these. The others are Gale on the south, Jaula,
Tanavaca, Cande, Batecalon, Vilacem, Trinquinimale, and
Jafanapatam[142].
[Footnote 139:
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