than one hundred and eighty rix-dollars a year. Amethyfts,
and an infinite variety of cryftals and cryftalline gems, are found
in that neighborhood. The account of my able correfpondent
well merits perufal.
I n h a b i t a n t s . T he inhabitants are the Cingalefe; thefe are aboriginal, and
differ totally in language from the people o f Malabar, or any
other neighboring nation. Their features more like Europeans
than any other. Their hair long, moft commonly turned up.
They are black, but well made, and with good countenances,
Reuoion. and o f excellent morals, and o f great piety. Their religion is
derived from Buddo, a profelyte of the great Indian Foe: his
doctrine fpread over Japan and Siam, as well as that o f Foe*.
It confifts of the wildeft idolatry, and the idols, the obje£ts of
their worihip, are the moft monftrous and phantaftic. The pagodas
are numerous, and many o f them, like feveral in India, o f
hewn-ftone, moft richly and exquifitely carved. The Cingalefe
believe Buddo to have come upon earth; and that to him belonged
the falvation o f fouls: all human happinefs, fay they,
proceeds from him : all evil, from the devil, to whom he permits
the power of punifhment. When fick, they dedicate a red
cock to that being, as the Romans did one to Efculapius. During
the time he inhabited the earth, they tell us, that he ufually fate
under the ihade of the ficus religiofa, which, in honor of him,
is called in the Cingalefe tongue, Budagbaba. His religion is
the eftabliihed religion o f the iiland.
G o v e r n m e n t . T he c ivil government is monarchical. T h e emperor, in the
time o f Knox, was abfolute, and clamed the moft undifputable
* Knox, 72» 73, 75. Ksempfer’s Hift. Japan, i. 241.
right
right over the lives and fortunes o f all his fubjefts. He was a
moft barbarous tyrant, and took a diabolical delight in putting
his fubjedts to the moft cruel and lingering deaths. Elephants
were often the executioners o f his vengeance, and were directed
to pull the unhappy criminals limb from limb with their trunks,
and fcatter them to the birds o f the air, or beafts of the field.
The emperor’s refidence was at Candy, nearly in the center o f
the iiland; but he was, in Knox's time, by the rebellion of his
fubjedts, obliged to defert that city. The government is faid,
by Wolff, p. 235, to be at prefent very mild, and regulated by
the ftatute laws of the land, the joint produdtion o f divers wife
princes, and are confidered as facred by the Cingalefe. Iris pof-
iible that the tyrant, in the days of Knox, had deftroyed the
liberties o f his country, which were afterwards reftored. The R o b e r t K n o x .
author Robert Knox is a writer fully to be depended on ; a plain
honeft man, who, in 1657, failed in one of the Eafi India Company’s
ihips to Madras; and on the return, in 1659, was forced
by a ftorm into Ceylon, to refit: when his father (who was captain)
went on ihore, and, with fixteen more o f the crew, were
feized by the emperor’s foldiers, and detained. The Captain
died in a year’s time. Our author lived nineteen years in the
ifland, and faw the greateft part of it. At length, with difficulty,
he efcaped, and arrived fafe in England, in September 1680. His
hiftory o f the ifland, and o f his adventures, were publiihed in
1680; and appears to be the only authentic account of the internal
parts, and the only one that can be entirely relied on.
T here is in this ifland a race o f wild men, called Wedas, or Wedas, or
Bedas; they ipeak the Cingalefe language, but inhabit the depth Bedas:
9 of