Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/207



From Cosmas we learn that, in his day, great numbers of vessels from all parts of India, Persia, and Æthiopia, were in the habit of trading with Ceylon; and that the island itself had "numerous fleets of ships belonging to its own merchants." He reckons the tonnage of these vessels "as generally of about three thousand amphoræ"; adding that "their mariners do not make astronomical observations, but carry birds to sea, and letting them go, from time to time, follow the course they take for the land." Cosmas further remarks, that "they devote only four months in the year to the pursuits of navigation, and are particularly careful not to trust themselves on the sea during the next hundred days after the summer solstice, for within those seas it is, at that time, the middle of winter." But the "numerous fleets of ships" he refers to were, probably, the property of Arabian merchants settled in the island, navigated by their own countrymen, and not by the natives of Ceylon. The Singhalese, indeed, in ancient and modern times alike, have shown an apathy in all matters connected with navigation, the more remarkable as, by its position and the character of its coasts, Ceylon is singularly well adapted to be the nursery of an able race of seamen. The boats now found there are all copies from models supplied by other nations; even their strange canoes, with out-riggers and a balance log, are but repetitions of the boats of the islanders of the Eastern Archipelago; while their ballams, canoes of a larger and more substantial description, are borrowed from the vessels of Malabar. It is curious that, to this day, the gunwales of their dhows are frequently topped by wicker-work, smeared with