address,
which, taken in its oriental meaning, was literally true, had the
desired effect; one of the boats approached me. Immediately that I was
in the boat I fainted, and I believe that my friend was much in the same
condition. He, however, quickly recovered, and by the promise of an
increased reward induced the fishermen to return at once to the shore.
I did not return to consciousness till I found myself being lifted out
of the boat and placed on a litter of wicker-work. Van Deck was carried
in the same way, as he was too weak to walk. We were thus conveyed to
the house of a chief, who resided not far from the shore, built on the
summit of a rising ground overlooking the sea.

The chief, who was every inch a gentleman, received us with the greatest
hospitality, and, seeing what we most required, had us both put into
clean, comfortable beds in a large airy room, where, after we had taken
a few cups of hot coffee, we fell asleep, and did not awake again till
the evening. Our host had then a sumptuous repast ready for us, of
which by that time we were pretty well capable of partaking. Poor Van
Deck was naturally very much out of spirits at the loss of his brother,
but the necessity of interpreting for me kept him from dwelling on his
own grief.

At the time of which I have hitherto been speaking, when I was in the
east, the spot on which Singapore, with its streets of stone palaces,
its superb public edifices and rich warehouses, now stands, was a sandy
flat, with a few straggling huts inhabited by fishermen or pirates. I
am about to give a piece of history posterior to my voyage as a
supercargo. After the peace of 1814, when Java and its dependencies
were given up to the Dutch, their first act was to impose restrictions
on British commerce in the Archipelago. They were enabled to effect
this object from the position of their settlements, those in the Straits
of Malacca and Sunda commanding all the western entrances to the China
and Java seas, and it therefore became evident that, without some effort
to destroy their monopolies, the sale of British manufactures in the
eastern islands would soon cease. Sir Stamford Raffles, who was at that
time Governor of Bencoolen, represented the case so strongly to the
Supreme Government at Bengal that the governor-general gave him the
permission he asked to make a settlement near the north-east entrance of
the Straits of Malacca. He accordingly, in the year 1819, fixed