eared to be about forty
years of age. It is difficult to reconcile this date with the recorded
events of this unfortunate reign, and I have doubts whether it was not
the usurper whom the Captain saw.)

He was exposed however to further revolutions. About six years after his
restoration the palace was attacked in the night by a desperate band of
two hundred men, headed by a man called Raja Udah, and he was once more
obliged to make a precipitate retreat. This usurper took the title of
sultan Suliman shah, but after a short reign of three months was driven
out in his turn and forced to fly for refuge to one of the islands in the
eastern sea. The nature of his pretensions, if he had any, have not been
stated, but he never gave any further trouble. From this period Muhammed
maintained possession of his capital, although it was generally in a
state of confusion.

1772.

"In the year 1772," says Captain Forrest, "Mr. Giles Holloway, resident
of Tappanooly, was sent to Achin by the Bencoolen government, with a
letter and present, to ask leave from the king to make a settlement
there. I carried him from his residency. Not being very well on my
arrival, I did not accompany Mr. Holloway (a very sensible and discreet
gentleman, and who spoke the Malay tongue very fluently) on shore at his
first audience; and finding his commission likely to prove abortive I did
not go to the palace at all. There was great anarchy and confusion at
this time; and the malcontents came often, as I was informed, near the
king's palace at night."

1775.

The Captain further remarks that when again there in 1775 he could not
obtain an audience.

1781.

The Annals report his death to have happened on the 2nd of June 1781, and
observe that from the commencement to the close of his reign the country
never enjoyed repose. His brother, named Ala-eddin (or Uleddin, as
commonly pronounced, and which seems to have been a favourite title with
the Achinese princes), was in exile at Madras during a considerable
period, and resided also for some time at Bencoolen.

The eldest son of the deceased king, then about eighteen years of age,
succeeded him on the 16th of the same month, by the title of Ala-eddin
Mahmud shah Juhan, in spite of an opposition attempted to be raised by
the partisans of another son by a favourite wife. Weapons had been drawn
in the court before the palace, when the tuanku agung or high priest, a
person of great respectability and infl