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Our interests however in the end prevailed, and Bencoolen in particular, to which the other places were rendered subordinate in 1686, began to acquire some degree of vigour and respectability. In 1689 encouragement was given to Chinese colonists to settle there, whose number has been continually increasing from that time.
The kings of Achin possess a grant of territory along the sea-coast as far down as Bencoolen from the sultan of Menangkabau, whose superiority has always been admitted by them, and will be perhaps so long as he claims no authority over them, and exacts neither tribute nor homage.
He was purchased along with his mother at Mindanao by Mr Moody; and when Mr Moody and I went together to Bencoolen, he gave me at parting half the property of this painted prince and his mother, leaving them to my care. They were born in the island of Meangis, which abounds in gold, cloves, and nutmegs, as he afterwards told me.
Halkart, myself and 14 Lascars and others. Our stock of provision was two bags of rice and one gang cask of water, with which we conceived we might hold out until reaching Bencoolen, whither we determined to make the best of our way. The allowance to each man we fixed at one tea-cupful of rice and a pint of water daily, but we soon found it necessary to make a considerable reduction.
Bencoolen is occasionally visited by the hill tribes from the mountains in its neighbourhood: they come down in bands of ten, fifteen, or twenty men, bringing with them gold-dust to barter for opium. As neither rice nor cocoa-nuts grow in the elevated region inhabited by them, they usually bring also a few bags of potatoes to exchange for those luxuries.
There were also two Singapore women, and a child, and two British-born Bencoolen Malays, who were taken in their own trading boat going to Tringanau. The husband of the younger woman had been killed by the pirates, and she, like all women who fall into their hands, had suffered every outrage and insult which could be offered her. They were almost living skeletons.
In September of that year I went to Malacca, and came back about Christmas, 1690. Soon after I went to Fort St George or Madras, where I remained five months, and came back to Bencoolen, an English factory on the west coast of Sumatra. Before relating my return to England, it may be proper to give some account of Jeoly, the painted prince, who afterwards died at Oxford.
It is remarkable that at Batavia, where the assassins just now described, when taken alive, are broken on the wheel, with every aggravation of punishment that the most rigorous justice can inflict, the mucks yet happen in great frequency, whilst at Bencoolen, where they are executed in the most simple and expeditious manner, the offence is extremely rare.
Vessels slipped their cables and sailed away by night for some secret destination with whose savage potentate trade relations had been established. It might be Captain Jonathan Carnes who, while at the port of Bencoolen in 1793, heard that pepper grew wild on the northern coast of Sumatra.
During this voyage, Dampier had discovered several hitherto unknown islands, and especially the Baschi group. Like the thorough adventurer he was, immediately he recovered his health he travelled over the south of Asia, Malacca, Tonkin, Madras, and Bencoolen, where he enrolled himself as an artilleryman in the English service. Five months afterwards he deserted and returned to London.
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