There are many lions and other wild beasts here and plenty of game, both beast and bird.

NOTE 1.—­No city or district is now known by the name of ELY, but the name survives in that of Mount Dely, properly Monte d’ELY, the Yeli-mala of the Malabar people, and called also in the legends of the coast Sapta-shaila, or the Seven Hills.  This is the only spur of the Ghats that reaches the sea within the Madras territory.  It is an isolated and very conspicuous hill, or cluster of hills, forming a promontory some 16 miles north of Cananore, the first Indian land seen by Vasco da Gama, on that memorable August morning in 1498, and formerly very well known to navigators, though it has been allowed to drop out of some of our most ambitious modern maps.  Abulfeda describes it as “a great mountain projecting into the sea, and descried from a great distance, called Ras Haili”; and it appears in Fra Mauro’s map as Cavo de Eli.

Rashiduddin mentions “the country of Hili,” between Manjarur (Mangalore) and Fandaraina (miswritten in Elliot’s copy Sadarsa).  Ibn Batuta speaks of Hili, which he reached on leaving Manjarur, as “a great and well-built city, situated on a large estuary accessible to great ships.  The vessels of China come hither; this, Kaulam, and Kalikut, are the only ports that they enter.”  From Hili he proceeds 12 miles further down the coast to Jor-fattan, which probably corresponds to Baliapatan.  ELLY appears in the Carta Catalana, and is marked as a Christian city.  Nicolo Conti is the last to speak distinctly of the city.  Sailing from Cambay, in 20 days he arrived at two cities on the sea-shore, Pacamuria (Faknur, of Rashid and Firishta, Baccanor of old books, and now Barkur, the Malayalim Vakkanur) and HELLI.  But we read that in 1527 Simon de Melo was sent to burn ships in the River of Marabia and at Monte d’Elli.[1] When Da Gama on his second voyage was on his way from Baticala (in Canara) to Cananor, a squall having sprung his mainmast just before reaching Mt. d’Ely, “the captain-major anchored in the Bay of Marabia, because he saw there several Moorish ships, in order to get a mast from them.”  It seems clear that this was the bay just behind Mt. d’Ely.

Indeed the name of Marabia or Marawi is still preserved in Madavi or Madai, corruptly termed Maudoy in some of our maps, a township upor the river which enters the bay about 7 or 8 miles south-east of Mt. d’Ely, and which is called by De Barros the Rio Marabia.  Mr. Ballard informs me that he never heard of ruins of importance at Madai, but there is a place on the river just mentioned, and within the Madai township, called Payangadi ("Old Town"), which has the remains of an old fort of the Kolastri (or Kolatiri) Rajas.  A palace at Madai (perhaps this fort) is alluded to by Dr. Gundert in the Madras Journal, and a Buddhist Vihara is spoken of in an old Malayalim poem as having existed at the same place.  The same paper speaks of “the famous emporium of Cachilpatnam near Mt. d’Ely,” which may have been our city of Hili, as the cities Hili and Marawi were apparently separate though near.[2]