BARRETTO DE RESENDE’S. ACCOUNT OF MALACUA. RS 
of recording that instructions for the adoption of the spelling— 
Johore—were issued by the Government of the Straits Settle- 
ments in Government Gazette Notification No 377 of 1899.) 
Pahang. Pam is the form in which the name is most commonly 
found. Purchas in His Pilgrimes has variations Paam and Pan. 
A throwing spear. It would appear that the Portuguese found this 
word in use in South Africa, and applied it generally through- 
out the east. (Yule gives its derivation as the Berber word 
zaghaya with the Arabic article prefixed, and adds an interest- 
ing list of quotations of its use by early travellers). Godinho 
de Eredia in his account of the “army” of Malacca also writes 
of the assegay. 
The author’s equivalent © darts of fire-hardened wood ”’ is correct. 
The word is Malay—seligz. Malay boys generally make the head of 
a seligz of bamboo, out to a razor-edge in the shape of a _ spear- 
head, and use it for spearing pelandok and napu. In the days 
when the Malacca Malays used poisoned weapons, a_ seligi 
was of course as dangerous as any spear. 
Both in Malay and in Javanese, the bow is called panah, and the 
arrow the bow’s child”. The use of these weapons, which 
is unknown to the Malays of the Southern end of the Peninsula, 
would appear to have been borrowed from the people who 
thronged there in the days, immediately before its capture by 
Albuquerque, when it was the meeting place of the trade of 
the Indian and the Pacific Oceans. 
The sumpitan (sumpit—to blow) is the tube, and not the dart which 
is known as the “anak sumpitan.”” It is still the principal 
weapon of the aborigines. 
Godinho de Eredia writes thus of the climate of Malacca: 
* The air in this region of Malacca is very fresh and very 
healthy ; the opposite of what had been thought by the ancients, 
notably Aristotle and Ptolemeus who affirm that the part of the 
world between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn is very hot 
and burning, and that the atmosphere there is torrid. This land 
of Ujontana is truly the freshest and the most agreeable in the 
world. The air there is healthy and vivifying; well suited for 
keeping the human body in good health, being at the same 
time hot and moist. Neither the heat nor the humidity are 
however excessive: for the heat is tempered by, and counter- 
acts the humidity which results from the rains which in this 
region are frequent throughout the year, especially at the 
changes of the monsoon.” 
This description, doubtless, savours of hyperbole, but as 
the early Chinese travellers condemned the climate of Malacca 
as  unwholesome,’ and as this condemnation is repeated in 
Whiteway’s © Rise of the Portuguese Power in India ”’ (page’ 5) 
it is well to record a more favourable opinion. 
The Batu Pahat river was known to the Portuguese as Rio Fermozo. 
(Crawfurd’s Descriptive Dictionary: Article Malacca). Captain 
R. A. Soc., No. 60, 1911, 
8. Pam. 
9. Assegay, 
10. Saligas. 
11. Bows and 
Arrows 
12. Sumpitan 
13. Climate 
of Malacca. 
14. River 
Fermozo. 
