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Updated: June 23, 2025
I find these two names used indiscriminately in Malayan writings, and sometimes coupled together; but Valentyn pronounces the gahru to be an inferior species, and the Batavian Catalogue describes it as the heart of the rasamala, and different from the genuine kalambak. This unctuous substance, which burns like a resin, is understood to be the decayed, and probably disordered, part of the tree.
The fame of this creature having reached Europe, the British Minister in Holland wrote to Valentyn on the 28th December 1716, whilst the Emperor, Peter the Great of Russia, was his guest at Amsterdam; to communicate the desire of the Czar, that the mermaid should be brought home from Amboina for his Imperial inspection.
The Annals further state that he was succeeded by sultan Ala-eddinMahayat-shah, who reigned only about four years and died in February 1641. That this is the more accurate account I have no hesitation in believing, although Valentyn, who gives a detail of the king's magnificent funeral, was persuaded that the reign which ended in 1641 was the same that began in 1607.
It has been known, however, to all the old ichthyologists, Valentyn, Renard, Seba, Artedi, and has been named Chætodon lineatus, by Linné. Of these richly coloured fishes the most familiar in the Indian seas are the Pteroids. They are well known on the coast of Africa, and thence eastward to Polynesia; but they do not extend to the west coast of America, and are utterly absent from the Atlantic.
Finally Valentyn winds up his proofs, by the accumulated testimony of Pliny , Theodore Gaza, George of Trebisond, and Alexander ab Alexandro, to show that mermaids had in all ages been known in Gaul, Naples, Epirus, and the Morea.
The account given by Juan de Barros of the abandonment of the Malayan city of Singapura and foundation of Malacca differs materially from the above; and although the authority of a writer, who collected his materials in Lisbon, cannot be put in competition with that of Valentyn, who passed a long and laborious life amongst the people, and quotes the native historians, I shall give an abstract of his relation, from the sixth book of the second Decade.
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