The valley opens to the sea, and is transcendently pleasant."-- PINKERTON'S _Voyages_, vol.vii.p.

218.
But a passage in Edrisi, while it agrees with the terms of Abou-zeyd, explains at the same time that these gobbs were not valleys converted into gardens, to which the seamen resorted for pleasure to spend two or three months, but the embouchures of rivers flowing between banks, covered with gardens and forests, into which mariners were accustomed to conduct their vessels for more secure navigation, and in which they were subjected to detention for the period stated.

The passage is as follows in Jaubert's translation of Edrisi, tom.i.p.

73:--"Cette ile (Serendib) depend des terres de l'Inde; ainsi que les vallees (in orig.
aghbab) par lesquelles se dechargent les rivieres, et qu'on nomme 'Vallees de Serendib.' Les navires y mouillent, et les navigateurs y passent un mois ou deux dans l'abondance et dans les plaisirs." It is observable that Ptolemy, in enumerating the ports and harbours of Ceylon, maintains a distinction between the ordinary bays, [Greek: kolpos], of which he specifies two corresponding to those of Colombo and Trincomalie, and the shallower indentations, [Greek: limen], of which he enumerates five, the positions of which go far to identify them with the remarkable estuaries or _gobbs_, on the eastern and western coast between Batticaloa and Calpentyn.
To the present day these latter gulfs are navigable for small craft.

On the eastern side of the island one of them forms the harbour of Batticaloa, and on the western those of Chilaw and Negombo are bays of this class.