391 
EARLY planting enterprise in the 
STRAITS. 
In the great building consecrated to the official uses of India at 
Whitehall there are preserved several hundred volumes of records 
relating to the Straits Settlements, abstract and brief chronicles of 
the days when British Malaya was in the making. They give a won- 
derfully vivid picture of the life of the early settlers. The old 
servants of the East India Company allowed nothing to escape their 
vigilant observation and so we have inscribed in these time-stained 
documents the most intimate details affecting the interests of the 
Settlements. There we may see set out the price paid for labour 
more than a century ago, the cost of provisions and the methods of 
doing business side by side with other prosaic matters. We have 
accounts of official quarrels and (whisper it gently) official vices. 
Occasionally the suggestion of a duel flits across the page to add 
piquancy to the official story. Nor is the element of pure romance 
wanting. In the stories of old time piracies related in matter of fact 
style by the official diarist there is material for a score of thrilling 
novels. 
The substantial interest and value of the records lie in the light 
they throw on the origin and infancy of the principal administrative 
institutions and the developments of the Colony’s commercial enter- 
prises. If, for example, we take planting as a theme we find an 
abundance of material illustrative of the beginnings uf the wide 
reaching system of agricultural exploitation which gives the British 
Malayan region such an enviable superiority amongst countries which 
compete for the supply of tropical products in the world’s markets. 
In reality British planting enterpise is very much older than any of 
the existing Settlements. It dates back to the period towards the end 
of the seventeenth century when the English East India Company 
was in strenuous rivalry with the Dutch East India Company for the 
supply of spices to the European markets. Driven out of the Eastern 
Islands and circumscribed in their operations at Batavia and Bantam 
the agents of the English Company established themselves on the 
West Coast of Sumatra, principally at Bencoolen, officially designated 
in the records, first Fort Java, and afterwards Fort Marlborough. 
Here they inaugurated a system which is well described in the accom- 
panying extract 
“ We can truthfully assure your honours that our utmost diligence 
and endeavours have not been wanting for promoting the increase of 
Pepper and we hope a few years will give ample demonstration that 
they have not been ineffectual (we) having left no stone unturned to 
put them on that necessary work. *** There are now both here and 
at ye North ward a great number of Pepper trees lately planted, the old 
plantations being generally decayed as they usually die in 14 or 15 
years time and the young ones are generally three or four years 
before they produce any quantity, which is the reason of our crops at 
