Malacca Harbour. 
The. following account of Malacca harbour is' taken from 
the Singapore Free Press’ of 1834, and is reprinted by te 
kind permission of the editor, one 
We Geo MG 
The present condition of the roads, and the difficulty of 
landing, except at nearly high water, are a matter of notoriety 
and people sometimes wonder how Malacca ever came to be 
selected as the site for a port, but a reference to old residents 
in the place, to early accounts of it, and to native traditions, 
shews that things were not always so, and may, perhaps, indicate 
_ the way in which the change came about. 
A tradition exists among the natives that Malacca was not 
originally situated on its present site, but Telok Dalam (deep 
bay) on the other side of the Panchur, a rocky point on the 
coast about thirteen miles N. W. of Malacca, where tin has 
been found on the shore below high-water mark. This tradi- 
tion bears testimony to the fact of Malacca having once pos- 
sessed a good anchorage close inshore, but, finding appear- 
ances against it, locates the original port elsewhere. 
The oldest resident in the place states that his father 
remembered when Pulau Upeh (a lateritic island lying about 
two and a half miles a little N. of W. from the town) was 
only a pistol-shot from the shore, and it is said that about 
thirty years ago or so, there was a house at Limbongan (two 
miles from town on the road to Tanjong Kling and nearly op- 
posite Pulau Upeh) in a situation which is now 300 or 400 
yards out from the shore. It is also known that land which 
was leased out by Government in that neighbourhood not 
very many years ago has disappeared altogether owing to the 
encroachment of the sea. 
Jour. Straits Branch \R. A. Soc., No. 52, 1908. 
