TIN MINING IN PERAK. 5 
working the mine some 400 years ago. This find would appear to show 
that Portuguese coin passed current in Perak at that time. 
In 1641 Malacca fell into the hands of the Dutch, and in the same year 
Valentyn, in his Account of Malacca, says: ‘‘ Several necessaries, to the 
amount of 3801 rix dollars, had been forwarded per the said store-ship 
Gragt and per some other ships, whilst different sorts of calicos, to an 
amount of rupees 31,341, had been sent with the Factors Jan Dirkssoon 
Puyt and Joris Vermeeren for the tin trade at Perak, Kedah, Ujong 
Salang (Junk Ceylon), and Bangeri, besides rooo rix dollars in specie ; 
31,341 guilders were also sent for the use of the above-named places, 
with orders that as much tin as could be got was to be sent to Batavia 
for the trade with Suratte and Persia.” 
About the year 1650 the Dutch established, by virtue of a treaty 
with Achin, a trading station on the Perak river, to control the tin 
trade. In the following year the Malays attacked it and killed all the 
Dutch. Captain Alexander Hamilton, who visited the Straits of Malacca 
in the end of the seventeenth century, quaintly writes :—‘ Perak is the 
next country to Quedah. It is properly a Part of the Kingdom of 
Johore, but. the People are untractable and rebellious, and the Govern- 
ment anarchical. Their Religion is heterodox Mahometism. The 
Country produces more Tin than any in India, but the Inhabitants are so 
treacherous, faithless, and bloody, that no European Nation can keep 
Factories there with safety. The Dutch tried it once, and the first year 
had their Factory cut off. They then settled on Pullodingding, an 
Island at the Mouth of the River Perak, but about the year 1690 that 
Factory was also cut off, and I never heard that any Body else ever 
attempted to settle there since. 
“There are several other Places along that Coast of Malaya that 
produce great Quantities of Tin, but Salangor and Parsalore are the 
most noted, tho’ little frequented by Europeans, because they have too 
many of the Perak Qualities to be trusted with honest Mens Lives and 
Money. Their Religion is also a Sort of scoundrel Mahometism.” 
The factory on the Perak river was re-established and abandoned 
several times, and the Dutch were finally ejected by the English under 
Lieutenants Lord Camelford and MacAlister in the year 1795. Anderson 
says :—‘‘ Captain Glass, the commanding officer of the troops in Penang 
shortly after it was occupied by the English ’ ’—that is to say in 1787— 
“gives the annual export of tin from Perak as 5000 pikuls, which was 
sold to the Dutch at 32 Spanish Dollars per Bahar of 428 lbs.* 
* * * # * % 
‘ After the expulsion of the Dutch from Perak, there was equal to 
2000 Bahars, or 6000 pikuls of tin annually imported into Prince of 
Wales Island from that country, and the whole produce about eighteen 
or twenty years ago, is not over-rated at gooo pikuls.”” That is, in 1804 
to 1806. Twelve years afterwards, in the year 1818, there were esti- 
* This is interesting, as it appears to be one of the oldest mentions of the Perak standard 
of weight. The present bhara is taken to be 427°885 lbs. weight, or about one-tenth of a 
pound less. The difference per kati is only 23 gr ains, and the 24 dollars which constitute 
the kati would have weighed 416°108 grains each, instead of 416 grains as at present. 
