118 
SKETCH OF THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 
ami carry the geological records of the Province back to a remote 
period, for the first settlement of the Malays, KotaAur, is only with¬ 
in the most recent, and monuments of still earlier inhabitants exist. 
Since the Malays established a colony at Kota Aur (probably six cen¬ 
turies ago) the land seems to have increased about a mile and a half in 
breadth. The accumulation of mud appears to have eventually com¬ 
pelled the colonists to abandon the settlement and proceed to Kedah. 
Batu Kawan is now so completely embraced by the land that its 
coast forms one line with that of the Province. Until recent years 
it was not generally known to Europeans that it was still an island. 
In older maps it is laid down as part of the mainland. The small 
hill called Bukit Duraka Juru lias large rounded granite rocks on 
its western side, Which must for ages have been exposed to the abra¬ 
sion of waves and currents before the Province existed as dry land; 
' but the mangrove swamp still conies up to it, and shows that it is 
only recently the waters of the sea have ceased to sweep past it. 
This hill consists of granite, and its eastern side preserves a monu¬ 
ment of a recent upward movement in a spur, about fourteen feet 
above the level of the plain, consisting of oysters and other modern 
marine shells, imbedded in a hard black earth, Bukit Merab 
is four miles from the coast, but the fiat plain surrounding it con¬ 
tains recent shells. From the steepness of the seaward face of the 
hill, and its general configuration, it may be inferred that a consi¬ 
derable portion of it was devoured by the sea, and that it consequent¬ 
ly existed as an island during a long period subsequent to its eleva¬ 
tion. The Malays of the Province, who are naturally observant of 
natui al phenomena and thus make a rude geology of their own, un¬ 
hesitatingly assert that all the isolated hills scattered over this part of 
the Province were formerly islands. The native annals of Kedah 
even go back to the time when Gunong Jerai, or the great mountain 
mass called Kedah Peak, now 25 miles inland, was surrounded 
ed permdtdngs by the Malays) we are not at present able to offer any de¬ 
cided opinion whether, as Colonel Low believes (Dissertation <£c.,) they 
have all been heaped up by the waves along the ancient lines of beach, or, 
as may have sometimes happened, were banks formed while the Straits be¬ 
hind them were still under the level of the sea. 
