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 CHAPTER IX.

How the Author began his escape, and got onward of his way, about an hundred miles.

Having often gone this way to seek for liberty, but could not yet find it; we again set forth, to try what success GOD Almighty would now give us, in the year 1679, on the 22nd of September; furnished with such arms as we could well carry with safety and secrecy, which were knives and small axes: we carried also several sorts of ware to sell as formerly. The moon being seven and twenty days old; which we had so contrived, that we might have a light moon, to see the better to run away by: having left an old man at home, whom I had hired to live with me, to look after my house and goats.

We went down at the hill Bocaul, where there was now no Watch; and but seldom any. From thence, down to the town of Bonder Coswat, where my father died. And by the town of Nicavar, which is the last town belonging to Hotkorle in that road. From thenceforward, the towns stand thin: for it was sixteen miles to the next town, called Parroah, which lay in the country of Nuwerakalawe; and all the way through a wilderness called Parroah Mocolane, full of wild elephants tigers and bears.

Now we set our design for Anuradhapoora, which is the lowest place inhabited belonging to the kingdom of Kandy; where there is a Watch always kept: and nearer than twelve or fourteen miles of this town, as yet, we had never been.

When we came into the midst of this country, we heard that the Governor thereof had sent officers from the Court to dispatch away the King's revenues and duties to the city [of Digligy], and that they were now come into the country: which put us into no small fear, lest if they saw us, they should send us back again. Wherefore we edged away into the western-most parts of Ecpoulpot, being a remote part of that country, wherein we now were: and there we sat knitting, until we