OUTLINE OF THE HISTORY OF THE DINDINGS 



FROM THE i 7 th CENTURY TO THE 



PRESENT TIME, 



BY 



E. M. MEREWETHER. 



^UHI N the following brief account of the Dindings, I do not 

 pretend to place before the readers of this Journal 

 much that is new. I have merely endeavoured to 

 put together in a connected form as much of the 

 History of the Dindings as I have been able to 

 gather from the sources at my disposal, in the hope 

 that it may be of some interest to those who only know the 

 Dindings by name. For the History of the Dutch Occupation 

 of Pangkor, I am indebted to Mr. W. E. Maxwell's article 

 on the Dutch in Perak, published in Vol. No. 10 of this 

 Journal, and to his Note on the same subject in Vol. No. 11. 



The earliest mention of the Dindings is found in a letter from 1661, 

 the Governor-General and Board of Administration of the 

 United East India Company, dated 1st October, 1661, discover- 

 ed among the Dutch records in Malacca, in which an order is 

 given to cut 200 pieces of a certain red wood at Pulau Din- 

 ding (Pangkor) to be sent to "Patria" (Holland). From this 

 it may be assumed that the Island became known to the Dutch 

 before that date, probably when they established their factory 

 in Perak in 1650, which was cut off in 1651. 



Two years later, on the 29th November, 1663, an old Dutch 1663. 

 navigator named WouTER SCHOUTEN visited Pulau Dinding 

 on his way to Bengal, and wrote an account of his voyage, 

 from which I take the following extracts : — 



" On the 25th November in the evening' sighted Malacka 

 for the second time, and advanced four miles with the land 



