200 
yOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[February;, 
trade. Here they met certain rajahs from Priaman and other ports 
on the west coast, who had visited the seat of government to 
seek protection from the Dutch, who had begun to make encroach- 
ments in that quarter. These rajahs appHed to the Enghsh for 
protection, and proposed to give them not only the profits of an 
exclusive trade, but to allow them soil, and the privilege of estab- 
lishing forts. So eager were the rajahs to effect this arrangement, 
that they embarked for Madras, formally to effect this object 
with the governor. An expedition was immediately put in prep- 
aration, intended to sail for the country of Priaman ; but which 
was diverted for a time from this object, by a similar request 
having, on the eve of departure, been received from' the rajahs of 
Bencoolen; to which place the English at once made sail, in- 
tending afterward to visit Priaman, and complete their establish- 
ments in that quarter. The Dutch, in the meantime, had pene- 
trated the designs of the English, and hastened to anticipate 
them in their establishments in Priaman. The contest between 
the English and Dutch was severe ; the latter continuing to annoy 
their rivals by every means in their power ; often joining with the 
natives, and compelling the English to leave some of their less 
considerable establishments — but not Bencoolen, which improved 
rapidly, and by sixteen hundred and eighty-nine had acquired 
much strength and respectability, and numbered among its inhabi- 
tants many industrious and useful Chinese colonists. By sixteen 
hundred and ninety-one, the Dutch power was greatly reduced, 
and that of the English and their trade proportionably increased. 
The settlement of Natal was established in seventeen hundred 
and fifty-two, and that of Tappanooly shortly afterward, which/' 
involved the Enghsh again in fresh disputes with the Dutch, who ' 
laid claim to the whole of the country where these forts were 
situated. i 
In seventeen hundred and sixty, the French, under Count 
d'Estaigne, destroyed all the English settlements on the coast of 
Sumatra, but which were all rcTestablished again under the treaty 
of Paris in seventeen hundred and sixty-three. In seventeen v 
hundred and eighty-one, the British in their turn took possession r 
of Padang and other Dutch factories, in consequence of war with . 
that nation ; and again in seventeen hundred and ninetyrfour. 
We have now arrived at that period in the commercial history ; 
