TUB HISTORY AND PRESENT CONDITION OF MALACCA. 731 
consideration of all the foregoing 1 accounts, that the present site of 
Malacca is not that on which the Malays from B4ntan orSinkepure 
first established a town of that name. The point is one of too slight 
importance or interest in these days to deserve the trouble of elu- 
cidation, but the circumstance mentioned in the romance of Hang 
Tuah is worthy of remark, that the first settlers from Bdntfin fixed 
themselves on an Island containing a mountain called Gunong La¬ 
ding (the name of mount Ophir), leading to the supposition that in 
their days, the sea covered much of what is now dry land. May not 
the degree of credit due to this statement, be coupled with that due 
to the early European Voyagers relative to the excellence and con- 
veniency of the Port of Malacca, and lead us to infer that the aspect 
of this coast in the 15th, century must have been something very 
different from what it now bears.* 
A perusal of Albuquerque’s reports to his government relative to 
his conquest of Malacca, should they exist either in Lisbon or Goa, 
w T ould certainly prove extremely interesting. He must have been 
gifted with rare genius and great political foresight, to have deter¬ 
mined, so soon after the discovery of the route round the Cape and 
so immediately after his own arrival in India, on obtaining posses¬ 
sion of so remote a spot as Malacca, but he must have viewed that 
spot with the eye of a statesman, as giving his country the com¬ 
mand of the whole trade of the Eastern Seas, and for upwards of a 
century his views were fully realized. Much has been said of the 
gallantry displayed in the attack, and of the devoted bravery of the 
Malays in the defence of the place, but it is probable that the lapse 
of time has tended to throw a halo of romance over the affair. 
Crawfurd, on the occasion of his visit to Malacca in 1821, says c ‘we 
cannot, as Europeans, but survey with pride the spot on which stood 
the bridge by which Albuquerque at the head of 700 Europeans 
stormed walls and intrenchments that were guarded by 30,000 bar¬ 
barians.” The 700 Europeans, 30,000 barbarians and the intrench¬ 
ments seem all equally imaginary. Could so large a body of Euro¬ 
peans have been spared from Goa in 1511, and how can we recon¬ 
cile 30,000 fighting men, behind walls and intrenchments, with the 
* See some remarks on the changes which the coast of Malacca has un¬ 
dergone, Sketch of the Physical Geography and Geology of the Malay Pe¬ 
ninsula, ante p. 125. We think it is probable, from the present appear¬ 
ance of the coast, that it has, on the whole, considerably retrograded dur¬ 
ing the last 3 centuries. Ed, 
