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.
