was more likely _St Thomas_, who has left many memorials in the _east_, and even in the _west_, both in Brasil and Paraguay. The natural woods of Ceylon are like the most curious orchards and gardens of Europe, producing citrons, lemons, and many other kinds of delicious fruit. It abounds in cinnamon, cardamums, sugar-canes, honey, and hemp. It produces iron, of which the best firelocks in the east are made. It abounds in precious stones, as rubies, sapphires, cats-eyes, topazes, chrysolites, amythests, and berils. It has many civet-cats, and produces, the noblest elephants in all the east. Its rivers and shores abound in a variety of excellent fish, and it has many excellent ports fit for the largest ships. _End of the Portuguese Asia_. CHAPTER V. VOYAGES AND TRAVELS IN EGYPT, SYRIA, ARABIA, PERSIA, AND INDIA. BY LUDOVICO VERTHEMA, IN 1503[33]. INTRODUCTION. This ancient itinerary into the east, at the commencement of the sixteenth century, together with the subsequent chapter, containing the peregrinations of Cesar Frederick, about 80 years later, form an appropriate supplement to the Portuguese transactions in India, as furnishing a great number of observations respecting the countries, people, manners, customs, and commerce of the east at an early period. We learn from the _Bibliotheque Universelle des Voyages_. I. 264, that this itinerary was originally published in Italian at Venice, in 1520. The version followed on the present occasion was republished in old English, in 1811, in an appendix to a reprint of HAKLUYT'S EARLY VOYAGES, TRAVELS, AND DISCOVERIES; from which we learn that it was translated from _Latine into Englishe, by Richarde Eden_, and originally published in 1576. In both these English versions, the author is named _Lewes Vertomannus_; but we learn from the _Biol. Univ. des Voy._ that his real name was _Ludovico Verthema_, which we have accordingly adopted on the present occasion, in preference to the latinized denomination used by Eden. Although, in the present version, we have strictly adhered to the sense of that published by Eden 236 years ago, it has appeared more useful, and more consonant to the plan of our work, to render the antiquated language into modern English: Yet, as on similar occasions, we leave the _Preface of the Author_ exactly in the language and orthography of Eden, the original translator. [Footnote 33: Hakluyt, iv. App. pp. 547--612. Ed. Lond. 1810-11.]