Wouter Schouten · Malaka Talwatte

Wouter Schouten, born at Haarlem in 1638 and trained in surgery, signed to the Dutch East India Company as an assistant surgeon in 1658, rose to chief surgeon, and first saw Ceylon about 1661; he returned to Holland in 1665, kept a barber’s shop at Haarlem and inspected the Surgeons’ Guild, and died in 1704. His ‘Oost-Indische Voyagie’, printed at Amsterdam in 1676, carries, besides its engraved title and portrait, forty-three copperplate engravings that the title-page declares were made from the author’s own drawings done in the East.

A 17th-century engraved harbour view of the city of Colombo, ships crowding the water before the fort and shore. — The city of Colombo (17th century), engraving · Dutch East India travel account. Source

His two double-page views, of the towns of Colombo and of Point de Galle, rank among the more topographically reliable of the period. Later editions ran on to 1775, with German and French translations to carry the work abroad.

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