120 
SKETCH OF THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 
It is probable that, prior to the formation of the great bank of 
sand which stretches along the present margin of the northern half of 
the Province to Kwalla Prv, the main current flowed in a direction 
across or behind Bagan Boya and Bagan Dalam, sweeping past or 
round B. Baraka Juru, and being deflected by the elevated hilly 
ground which terminates in B. Juru in a S. S. E. direction through 
the eastern channel, which, when we acquired Pinang in 1780, had a 
depth at its northern entrance of 7 and 8 fathoms, but which has 
now shoaled much throughout. When the central course of the 
current occupied the position above indicated, the mud must have 
accumulated within a line prolonged in a south easterly direction 
from one drawn from the rocks of Pulu Tikus to those off Tanjong 
Tokong. If we go back to an earlier date, before Per matting Pow, 
Permatang Passier &c. were formed, and when the current embrac¬ 
ed B. Merab, we have an arrangement of forces still more favorable 
to the deposit of silt in the space now occupied by the alluvial trian¬ 
gle of the N. E. plain of Pinang. Without a direction of the main 
current in the above course, leaving this a space of slack water, it is 
not easy to conceive how the alluvion of the island could have been 
drawn out in a triangular direction to the eastward. If the current, 
passing outside of P, Tikus and T* Tokong in a south easterly direc¬ 
tion, continued its course to the south of B. Mtwah, sand banks would 
be formed on this space in lines tending to an approximate parallel¬ 
ism with its course, but modified by the configuration of the then 
coast of the Island behind. 
Looking to the extensive tract, several miles broad, now forming 
dry land, over which the sea has left positive evidence of its recent 
retreat, we cannot but conclude that Penang itself, in the progress of 
a few centuries, will be surrounded by the mainland. Its distance 
from the latter, which, at the Fort, is now considerably less than 2 
miles, must, at a date subsequent to the last elevatory movement of 
the land, have been from 10 to 12 miles. When we observe the 
present accumulations of sediment from the various rivers whose 
earlier deposits formed the plain of the mainland, and combine with 
our observations the historical records which we possess, it is almost 
