Note 386 — BOOK VI. AN ACCOUNT OF COUNTRIES, NATIONS, SEAS, TOWNS, HAVENS, MOUNTAINS, RIVERS, DISTANCES, AND PEOPLES WHO NOW EXIST, OR FORMERLY EXISTED.

Although Poinsinet will not admit its identity, it is now universally agreed among the learned that the island of Taprobana is the modern Ceylon. As Gosselin observes, in the accounts said to have been given of Ceylon by the ambassadors to Claudius, great allowance must be made for the wrong interpretation which, owing to their ignorance of the language, the Romans must have given to much of their narrative.