ell you what it is like. It is about a palm
in length, and as thick as a man's arm; to look at, it is the most
resplendent object upon earth; it is quite free from flaw and as red as
fire. Its value is so great that a price for it in money could hardly be
named at all. You must know that the Great Kaan sent an embassy and begged
the King as a favour greatly desired by him to sell him this ruby,
offering to give for it the ransom of a city, or in fact what the King
would. But the King replied that on no account whatever would he sell it,
for it had come to him from his ancestors.[NOTE 5]

The people of Seilan are no soldiers, but poor cowardly creatures. And
when they have need of soldiers they get Saracen troops from foreign
parts.

[NOTE 1.--Mr. Geo. Phillips gives (_Seaports of India_, p. 216 et seqq.)
the Star Chart used by Chinese Navigators on their return voyage from
Ceylon to _Su-men-ta-la_.--H.C.]

NOTE 2.--Valentyn appears to be repeating a native tradition when he says:
"In old times the island had, as they loosely say, a good 400 miles
(i.e. Dutch, say 1600 miles) of compass, but at the north end the sea
has from time to time carried away a large part of it." (_Ceylon_, in vol.
v., p. 18.) Curious particulars touching the exaggerated ideas of the
ancients, inherited by the Arabs, as to the dimensions of Ceylon, will be
found in _Tennent's Ceylon_, ch. i. The Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang has
the same tale. According to him, the circuit was 7000 _li_, or 1400 miles.
We see from Marco's curious notice of the old charts (G.T. "_selonc qe se
treuve en la mapemondi des mariner de cel mer_") that travellers had begun
to find that the dimensions _were_ exaggerated. The real circuit is under
700 miles!

On the ground that all the derivations of the name SAILAN or CEYLON from
the old _Sinhala_, _Serendib_, and what not, seem forced, Van der Tuuk has
suggested that the name may have been originally Javanese, being formed
(he says) according to the rules of that language from _Sela_, "a precious
stone," so that _Pulo Selan_ would be the "Island of Gems." [Professor
Schlegel says (_Geog. Notes_, I. p. 19, note) that "it seems better to
think of the Sanskrit _sila_, 'a stone or rock,' or _saila_, 'a mountain,'
which agree with the Chinese interpretation."--H.C.] The Island was really
called anciently _Ratnadvipa_, "the Island of Gems" (_Mem. de H.Y._, II.
125, and _Harivansa_, I. 403); and it is termed by an Arab Histo