Not far from the city of Candia, where the king of Ceylon generally resides, is a river which flows down from one of the mountains. In the middle of this river the king has built a small palace, where he sometimes enjoys the cool air, and where are preserved the valuable gems which the rain and streams wash down from the mountains. Pearls are found in the district of _Mannàr_, at the western extremity of the island. This country produces the most beautiful elephants in all Asia, together with a great many deer, wild swine, and different kinds of red and yellow birds not known in Europe. It yields two crops every year, the produce of which is sufficient to feed all its inhabitants; but when the Dutch are at war with the king of Candia, they are obliged to procure their rice from Cochin on the coast of Malabar. They might raise coffee and pepper in Ceylon; but they cultivate neither of these articles, lest the price of the Malabar pepper and the Batavian coffee should be lowered, and attend merely to the culture of cinnamon, the sale of which is more profitable. They possess all the places on the sea-coast, and _Colombo_ is their capital. _Jasnapatnam_, _Negombo_, _Punta di Galle_, _Trinquemala_, and other settlements are dependencies on its government.[246] The Portuguese made themselves masters of this island in the year 1506; but in 1658 were expelled from it by the Dutch, A hundred years after, that is in 1759, the latter were involved in a war with the king of Candia, which threatened the most dangerous consequences. By the greatest good fortune Captain Du Flo, with a number of French adventurers, among whom were several able officers, hastened to their assistance from Pondicherry, and placed himself at the head of the Dutch troops. The war after that period assumed a different turn; the Dutch took the city of Candia, and in the year 1766 reduced the king to the necessity of signing a treaty of peace, in virtue of which he resigned the whole sea-coast, and agreed to deliver to them yearly a certain quantity of cinnamon at a very low rate. The king of Candia[247] was then suffered to remain in peaceable possession of the island. Not long before I arrived at Ceylon, Father Francis à Sancto Elisæo wrote to me from Malabar, that this prince had again quarrelled with the Hollanders, and refused to deliver the cinnamon at the price agreed on, which gave rise afterwards to another bloody war.