150 JACK'S LETTERS TO WALLICH, 1819-1821. 



at Serampur on the river Hoogly above Calcutta. From Seram- 

 pur, when the Danish territory was ceded, his ability secured, 

 after some little delay, the post at the Botanic Gardens which he 

 desired so much. To him, — a generous and good friend, — Jack 

 wrote as he had a mind to do : and the letters were filed by AVallich 

 along with other considerable accumulations. They have been 

 copied at the expense of the Straits Branch of the Eoyal Asiatic 

 Society under the kind supervision of Major A. T. Gage, the present 

 Superintendent of the Eoyal Botanic Gardens, Calcutta, on the 

 suggestion of Mr. H. N. Bidley, and are here for the first time 

 printed with the omission — always indicated — of certain criticisms 

 passed on Diard and Duvaucel, and of the official letters from 

 Eaffles to them at the end of their service which may be read in the 

 first edition of Lady Eaffles' Memoir of Sir Stamford Baffles. 



The voyage from Calcutta to Penang (Dec. 10th to Dec. 31st, 

 1818) was made as planned in the "Nearchus" and took just 

 twenty-one days. 



The voyage from Calcutta to Penang (Dec. 10th to Dec. 31st, 

 Council by Colonel John Alexander Bamierman, a senior officer 

 who had even served on the Directorate in London, and had been 

 sent out in 1817. Bamierman seems to have considered himself 

 too senior to suffer the interference of a younger man like Eaffles 

 and to have lent a very willing ear to opposing counsels from his 

 second commissioner. But Eaffles had the authority of the Mar- 

 quess of Hastings then Governor-General in India (1) to bring 

 to a close the disputed succession to the Kingship of Aeheen, and 

 (2) subsequently to endeavour to effect a settlement further to the 

 eastward than Penang, — both matters which had been very much 

 in the hand of the Governor of Penang : in fact Bannerman had just 

 tried under the orders of the Court of Directors to effect this last 

 himself, and failed, because the Dutch forestalled him. It seems 

 that he was therefore unwilling to see how another could succeed, 

 and he proved obstructive. It has been hinted that some of his 

 subordinates were venial : and if so it may be asked whether it was 

 merely by prescience or by leakage of information that the Dutch 

 came to forestall Bannerman at Ehio ; but the biscuit had been 

 fingered hesitatingly before by Bannerman (see Memoir of Sir 

 Stamford Eaffles, p. 395). With these matters Jack had nothing 

 to do : they took Eaffles away from Penang where he left his 

 wife in the charge of Jack as her confinement was approaching. 



Major W. Farquhar, we shall see, met Eaffles at Penang possi- 

 bly by accident but more probably by appointment: for if by ac- 

 cident why had he brought his drawings (see p. 153) with him. It 

 was he who had been sent by Bannerman only a few weeks earlier to 

 found the establishment at Ehio : and he on his return found him- 

 self under Eaffles orders instead. Doubtless the handing over of 

 the services of Tiis emissary to the younger man would be a thing 

 particularly nettling to Bannerman; for that the services were 



Jour. Straits Branch 



