The Tamil chieftain exhibited to Ibn Batuta his wealth in “pearls,” and under his protection he made the pilgrimage to the summit of Adam’s Peak accompanied by four jyogees who visited the foot-mark every year, “four Brahmans, and ten of the king’s companions, with fifteen attendants carrying provisions.”  The first day he crossed a river, (the estuary of Calpentyn?) on a boat made of reeds, and entered the city of Manar Mandali; probably the site of the present Minneri Mundal.  This was the “extremity of the territory of the infidel king,” whence Ibn Batuta proceeded to the port of Salawat (Chilaw), and thence (turning inland) he reached the city of the Singhalese sovereign at Gampola, then called Ganga-sri-pura, which he contracts into Kankar or Ganga.[1]

[Footnote 1:  As he afterwards writes, Galle “Kale.”]

He describes accurately the situation of the ancient capital, in a valley between two hills, upon a bend of the river called, “the estuary of rubies.”  The emperor he names “Kina,” a term I am unable to explain, as the prince who then reigned was probably Bhuwaneka-bahu IV., the first Singhalese monarch who held his court at Gampola.

The king on feast days rode on a white elephant, his head adorned with very large rubies, which are found in his country, imbedded in “a white stone abounding in fissures, from which they cut it out and give it to the polishers.”  Ibn Batuta enumerates three varieties, “the red, the yellow, and the cornelian;” but the last must mean the sapphire, the second the topaz; and the first refers, I apprehend, to the amethyst; for in the following passage, in describing the decorations of the head of the white elephant, he speaks of “seven rubies, each of which was larger than a hen’s egg,” and a saucer made of a ruby as broad as the palm of the hand.

In the ascent from Gampola to Adam’s Peak, he speaks of the monkeys with beards like a man (Presbytes ursinus, or P. cephalopterus), and of the “fierce leech,” which lurks in the trees and damp grass, and springs on the passers by.  He describes the trees with leaves that never fall, and the “red roses” of the rhododendrons which still characterise that lofty region.  At the foot of the last pinnacle which crowns the summit of the peak, he found a minaret named after Alexander the Great[1]; steps hewn out of the rock, and “iron pins to which chains are appended” to assist the pilgrims in their ascent; a well filled with fish, and last of all, on the loftiest point of the mountain, the sacred foot-print of the First Man, into the hollow of which the pilgrims drop their offerings of gems and gold.

[Footnote 1:  In oriental tradition, Alexander is believed to have visited Ceylon in company with the “philosopher Bolinus,” by whom De Sacy believes that the Arabs meant Apollonius of Tyana.  There is a Persian poem by ASHREP, the Zaffer Namah Skendari, which describes the conqueror’s voyage to Serendib, and his devotions at the foot-mark of Adam, for reaching which, he and Bolinus caused steps to be hewn in the rock, and the ascent secured by rivets and chains.—­See OUSELEY’S Travels, vol. i. p. 58. ]