Note 1 — CHAP. IV.

: CÆSAR, FREDERICK opens the account of his wanderings in India, A.D. 1563, as follows:—"Having for the space of eighteen years continually coasted and travelled in many countries beyond the Indies, wherein I have had both good and ill success in my travels" &c. He may be regarded as the last of the merchant voyagers of Venice, His book was translated into English almost simultaneously with its appearance in Italian, under the title of "The Voyages and Travaile of M. Cæsar Fredrick, Merchant of Venice, into the East Indies, and beyond the Indies, written at sea, in the Hercules of London, the 25th March, 1588, and translated out of Italian by Mr. THOMAS HICKOCKE, Lond, 4to. 1588." The author, who left Venice in 1563, crossed over from Cape Comorin to Chilaw, to be present at the fishery of pearls, which he describes almost as it is practised at the present time. The divers engaged in it were all Christians (see Christianity in Ceylon, ch. i. p. 11), under the care of friars of the order of St. Paul. Colombo was then a hold of the Portuguese, but without "walles or enemies;" and thence "to see how they gather the sinnamon, or take it from the tree that it groweth on (because the time that I was there, was the season that they gather it, in the moneth of Aprill) I, to satisfie my desire, went into a wood three miles from the citie, although in great danger, the Portugals being in arms, and in the field with the king of the country." Here he gives with great accuracy the particulars of the process of peeling cinnamon, as it is still practised by the Chalias.