114 MALACCA HARBOUR. 
world, sent a present of sandal-woods to Afonso Dalboquerque, 
and secretly begged a safeguard for himself and for all that 
settlement wherein he lived.” 
And again: “Afonso Dalbequerque ordered his Captains 
that upon the territory of Utemutarajah they should-make no 
requisition.” | 
Later again we find: “ Utemutarajah gave opportunity to 
the Moors who lived in his district of Dupet to make use of 
their own coinage and prevented ours from being current ;”’ 
and 3 
“But Utemutarajah took so little heed of this hint to 
mend his ways that Afonso Dalboquerque again sent word to 
say that on an occasion when a certain Naire, who had turned 
Christian, a man in the employment of the Meirinho§ was walk- 
ing in the District of Dupe, he had ordered his arrest ;”’ 
and 
He began to construct 7m Dupe strong stockades surround- 
ed with ditches.” 
From the above extracts the following conclusion may 
reasonably be drawn ; that when ALBUQUERQUE took Malacca, 
it was a harbour with deep waterand a fine sandy bay extend- 
ing in a curve from the river mouth westwards to the rocky 
eminence called Pulau Upeh. In all the mentions of Upeh, 
nothing is said about its: being an island, on the contrary, 
everything, particularly the passage © he began to construct in 
Dupe strong stockades surrounded with ditches’’ points to its 
being then part of the mainland and of the town. 
In the time of VALENTYN, the sea had already worn a way 
through the sandy shore and turned the western end of Upeh 
into an island; being barred from further encroachments on 
the west by a rocky ridge, its destructive tendencies found free 
play on the sandy coast in the opposite directions and continu- 
ed to operate till they had made a channel about two miles 
wide, and threatened the high road which skirts the coast, and 
which is now protected by a series of groins. 
+D’Upe. | 
§An officer whose duty it is to arrest criminals : the origin of the word, 
still current, for Inspector of Police ‘‘ Brenio.”’ 
Jour. Straits Branch, 
