IBS THE INDEPENDENT NATIVE STATES 



provision*, subsisting on the produce of orchards from which the 

 owners had been driven, and on such booty as their fast boats 

 could procure by piracy on the high seas and in the rivers and 

 creeks which seam the coast of Larut. 



At Simpang was the largest Si Kuan stockade, an ingeniously 

 constructed and considerable work, and about 300 or 400 yards 

 distant from it, right across the Bukit G-antang road, was a 

 stockade erected under Captain Speedy' s direction and filled with 

 Go Kuans and some 200 Indians, who had only been allowed to 

 leave India after considerable opposition from the authorities. 



Captain Speedy had dislodged the Si Kuans from the imme- 

 diate neighbourhood of Kota, the then largest town of Larut, and 

 the Go Kuans occupied that place ; but the Si Kuans still held, as 

 I have said, the river and the main road, not only up to Simpang, 

 but to abridge across the Larut river, some two miles higher up the 

 road in the direction of Kota, and there they had another stock- 

 ake called " Ah Oh." I should mention that in this part of Larut 

 the roads only were worth defending or fighting for, as the country 

 on either side was impassable swamp or jungle. The Mentri and 

 Captain Speedy occupied, besides Kota and the mines, the branch 

 road from Simpang to Bukit Gantang, the Mentri's own residence, 

 as also the stockade near the mouth of the Larut river from which 

 Captain Woollcombe, k.n., had driven the Si Kuans. 



As far as I could see the Si Kuans were still a long way from 

 being driven out of Larut, for though pressed for money, they had 

 the best position, whilst all the stores for the Mentri's friends, 

 which of course were supplied from Penang, had either to go over- 

 land from Province Wellesley, a long journey through the jungle, 

 or up the Limau, a branch of the Larut river, and thence through 

 the jungle by elephants to Bukit Gantang, Simpang, or Kota. 



With all the Mentri's superior artillery (he had 4 Krupp 

 guns of considerable calibre), his Indian contingent, and the advan- 

 tage of an English leader, he had not been able to strike any really 

 effectual blow at his enemies, and at this time affairs in Larut were 

 perhaps in a more deplorable state than they had ever been. 



