Flat, insomuch that in approaching on
board ship from the high seas you do not see the land till you are right
upon it.[NOTE 2] Now I will tell you all about this Island.
[Illustration: MAP to Illustrate POLO'S Chapters on India
MAP to Illustrate POLO's Chapters on the Malay Countries]
They have a king there whom they call SENDEMAIN, and are tributary to
nobody.[NOTE 3] The people are Idolaters, and go quite naked except that
they cover the middle. They have no wheat, but have rice, and sesamum of
which they make their oil. They live on flesh and milk, and have tree-wine
such as I have told you of. And they have brazil-wood, much the best in
the world.[NOTE 4]
Now I will quit these particulars, and tell you of the most precious
article that exists in the world. You must know that rubies are found in
this Island and in no other country in the world but this. They find there
also sapphires and topazes and amethysts, and many other stones of price.
And the King of this Island possesses a ruby which is the finest and
biggest in the world; I will tell you what it is like. It is about a palm
in length, and as thick as a man's arm; to look at, it is the most
resplendent object upon earth; it is quite free from flaw and as red as
fire. Its value is so great that a price for it in money could hardly be
named at all. You must know that the Great Kaan sent an embassy and begged
the King as a favour greatly desired by him to sell him this ruby,
offering to give for it the ransom of a city, or in fact what the King
would. But the King replied that on no account whatever would he sell it,
for it had come to him from his ancestors.[NOTE 5]
The people of Seilan are no soldiers, but poor cowardly creatures. And
when they have need of soldiers they get Saracen troops from foreign
parts.
[NOTE 1. - Mr. Geo. Phillips gives (Seaports of India, p. 216 et seqq.)
the Star Chart used by Chinese Navigators on their return voyage from
Ceylon to Su-men-ta-la. - H.C.]
NOTE 2. - Valentyn appears to be repeating a native tradition when he says:
"In old times the island had, as they loosely say, a good 400 miles
(i.e. Dutch, say 1600 miles) of compass, but at the north end the sea
has from time to time carried away a large part of it." (Ceylon, in vol.
v., p. 18.) Curious particulars touching the exaggerated ideas of the
ancients, inherited by the Arabs, as to the dimensions of Ceylon, will be
found in Tennent's Ceylon, ch.
