Fran?ois Valentijn?s Description of Ceylon: (Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, 1726) - vol.149

Fran?ois Valentijn's Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien (Old and New East Indies) has for long been regarded as a primary source of information on a number of regions of maritime Asia.

It is a veritable encyclopaedia, bringing together an array of facts, trivial and vital, from a wide range of contemporary and earlier literature, acknowledged and unacknowledged, and contains valuable excerpts from contemporary documents of the Dutch East India Company and from private papers.

It is indeed a public archive.