Nice small map titled Tricomali, from wood engraving with  fine detail and clear impression, nice hand coloring. Overall size approx. 21 x  16 cm, image size approx. 14 x 11 cm. From La Nouvelle Géographie universelle, la terre et les hommes, 19 vol. (1875-94), great work of Elisee Reclus. Cartographer is Charles Perron.

Trincomalee

ancient Gokanna

town and port, Sri Lanka, on the island's northeastern coast. It is situated on  a peninsula in Trincomalee Bay—formerly called Koddiyar (meaning “Fort by the  River”) Bay—one of the world's finest natural harbours.

Trincomalee was in early times a major settlement of Indo-Aryan immigrants, who  built the Temple of a Thousand Columns at the extremity of the peninsula. The  first Europeans to occupy the town were the Portuguese in the 17th century; they  razed the temple, using its stone to construct a fort. The port's harbour  changed hands repeatedly among the Dutch, French, and British until the British  gained lasting possession of it in 1795. Trincomalee's importance as a major  British base was heightened after the Japanese ousted the British from Singapore  in World War II; the Japanese bombed the town in 1942. The British continued to  hold the harbour after Sri Lanka's independence but relinquished it in 1957.

The port of Trincomalee is no longer important commercially, though in the 1960s  congestion and labour problems at Colombo, Sri Lanka's commercial capital and  chief port, caused some trade to be routed through it. Tourism has become an  important component of the local economy. The town is a rail terminus and has  good road connections with the rest of Sri Lanka. In December 2004 a large  tsunami triggered by an undersea earthquake near Indonesia killed hundreds of  people in Trincomalee and caused widespread destruction there. Pop. (2007  prelim.) 51,624.