1719.—"I was forc'd to give them an extraordinary meal every day, either of Farina or calavances, which at once made a considerable consumption of our water and firing."—Shelvocke's Voyage, 62.
1738.—"But garvanços are prepared in a different manner, neither do they grow soft like other pulse, by boiling...."—Shaw's Travels, ed. 1757, p. 140.
1752.—"... Callvanses (Dolichos sinensis)."—Osbeck, i. 304.
1774.—"When I asked any of the men of Dory why they had no gardens of plantains and Kalavansas ... I learnt ... that the Haraforas supply them."—Forrest, V. to N. Guinea, 109.
1814.—"His Majesty is authorised to permit for a limited time by Order in Council, the Importation from any Port or Place whatever of ... any Beans called Kidney, French Beans, Tares, Lentiles, Callivances, and all other sorts of Pulse."—Act 54 Geo. III. cap. xxxvi.
CALAY, s. Tin; also v., to tin copper vessels—H. ḳala'ī karnā. The word is Ar. ḳala'i, 'tin,' which according to certain Arabic writers was so called from a mine in India called ḳala'. In spite of the different initial and terminal letters, it seems at least possible that the place meant was the same that the old Arab geographers called Kalah, near which they place mines of tin (al-ḳala'i), and which was certainly somewhere about the coast of Malacca, possibly, as has been suggested, at Kadah[[54]] or as we write it, [Quedda]. [See Āīn, tr. Jarrett, iii. 48.]
The tin produce of that region is well known. Kalang is indeed also a name of tin in Malay, which may have been the true origin of the word before us. It may be added that the small State of Salangor between Malacca and Perak was formerly known as Nagri-Kalang, or the 'Tin Country,' and that the place on the coast where the British Resident lives is called Klang (see Miss Bird, Golden Chersonese, 210, 215). The Portuguese have the forms calaim and calin, with the nasal termination so frequent in their Eastern borrowings. Bluteau explains calaim as 'Tin of India, finer than ours.' The old writers seem to have hesitated about the identity with tin, and the word is confounded in one quotation below with [Tootnague] (q.v.). The French use calin. In the P. version of the Book of Numbers (ch. xxxi. v. 22) ḳala'ī is used for 'tin.' See on this word Quatremère in the Journal des Savans, Dec. 1846.
c. 920.—"Kalah is the focus of the trade in aloeswood, in camphor, in sandalwood, in ivory, in the lead which is called al-Kala'i."—Relation des Voyages, &c., i. 94.
c. 1154.—"Thence to the Isles of Lankiāliūs is reckoned two days, and from the latter to the Island of Kalah 5.... There is in this last island an abundant mine of tin (al-Kala'i). The metal is very pure and brilliant."—Edrisi, by Jaubert, i. 80.
1552.—"—Tin, which the people of the country call Calem."—Castanheda, iii. 213. It is mentioned as a staple of Malacca in ii. 186.