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The Dutch Company procured annually from Siak, for the use of Batavia, several rafts of spars for masts, and if the plan of building ships at Pinang should be encouraged large supplies of frame-timber for the purpose may be obtained from this river, provided a sense of interest shall be found sufficiently strong to correct or restrain the habits of treachery and desperate enterprise for which these people have in all ages been notorious.
Farther down there are several largish islands near the Sumatra coast but, as the passage is some sixty miles wide, there is little fear of our running foul of them." "Have the Dutch any settlements at Sumatra?" "Two or three. Palembang is the principal. It is on a river that runs down into the Banca Straits. I believe that they have trading stations at Jambi and Siak."
Jambi River has its principal source in the Limun country. Although of considerable size it is inferior to Siak and Indragiri. At an early stage of European commerce in these parts it was of some importance, and both the English and Dutch had factories there; the former on a small island near the mouth, and the latter at some distance up the river.
It is very generally eaten by the natives with their sirih or betel, and is supposed to have the property of cleansing and sweetening the mouth; for which reason it is also rubbed to the gums of infants. At Siak, Kampar, and Indragiri, on the eastern side of Sumatra, it is an important article of commerce.
On the western coast the general want of navigable rivers has materially hindered both the export and the employment of timber; but those on the eastern side, particularly Siak, have heretofore supplied the city of Batavia with great abundance, and latterly the naval arsenal at Pulo Pinang with what is required for the construction of ships of war.
A chain of mountains runs through its whole extent, the ranges being in many parts double and treble, but situated in general much nearer to the western than the opposite coast, being on the former seldom so much as twenty miles from the sea, whilst on the eastern side the extent of level country, in the broader part of the island, through which run the great rivers of Siak, Indragiri, Jambi, and Palembang, cannot be less than a hundred and fifty.
From the place where it discharges itself into the straits of Kampar or Bencalis, to the town of Siak is, according to the scale of his chart, about sixty-five geographical miles, and from thence to a place called Pakan bharu or Newmarket, where the survey discontinues, is about one hundred more.
From this, according to the authority of a map drawn by a native, issues a river called Ayer Ambelan, which afterwards takes the name of Indragiri, along which, as well as the two other great rivers of Siak to the northward, and Jambi to the southward, the navigation is frequent, the banks of all of them being peopled with Malayan colonies.
At daybreak the next morning the Austrians closed in and the Italians and Albanians under Essad Pasha were finally, after a spirited resistance, driven back from their positions at Bazar Siak. Soon afterward the Italians on the southern bank of the lower Arzen were forced to abandon their positions. The Austrians crossed the river and proceeded southward.
The proceedings of the Dutch on the coast of Sumatra, are a sore subject to the Singaporeans, as having interfered with their trade with the north-west coast of the island. By means of the extension of the Dutch posts from Padang into the interior, they compel the native to carry his coffee thither, instead of taking it, as formerly, down the Siak river, and thence to Singapore.
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