ection.

TRADE.

The trade is chiefly carried on by Kling vessels, as they are called,
from the coast of Coromandel, which supply cargoes of piece-goods, and
also raw silk, opium, and other articles, which they provide at Pinang or
Malacca; in return for which they receive gold, wax, sago, salted fish,
and fish-roes, elephants' teeth, gambir, camphor, rattans, and other
canes. According to the information of the natives the river is navigable
for sloops to a place called Panti Chermin, being eight days' sail with
the assistance of the tide, and within half a day's journey by land of
another named Patapahan, which boats also, of ten to twenty tons, reach
in two days. This is a great mart of trade with the Menangkabau country,
whither its merchants resort with their gold. Pakan-bharu, the limit of
Mr. Lynch's voyage, is much lower down, and the above-mentioned places
are consequently not noticed by him. The Dutch Company procured annually
from Siak, for the use of Batavia, several rafts of spars for masts, and
if the plan of building ships at Pinang should be encouraged large
supplies of frame-timber for the purpose may be obtained from this river,
provided a sense of interest shall be found sufficiently strong to
correct or restrain the habits of treachery and desperate enterprise for
which these people have in all ages been notorious.

RAKAN.

The river Rakan, to the northward of Siak, by much the largest in the
island, if it should not rather be considered as an inlet of the sea,
takes its rise in the Rau country, and is navigable for sloops to a great
distance from the sea; but vessels are deterred from entering it by the
rapidity of the current, or more probably the reflux of the tide, and
that peculiar swell known in the Ganges and elsewhere by the appellation
of the bore.

KAMPAR.

That of Kampar, to the southward, is said by the natives to labour under
the same inconvenience, and Mr. Lynch was informed that the tides there
rise from eighteen to twenty-four feet. If these circumstances render the
navigation dangerous it appears difficult to account for its having been
a place of considerable note at the period of the Portuguese conquest of
Malacca, and repeatedly the scene of naval actions with the fleets of
Achin, whilst Siak, which possesses many natural advantages, is rarely
mentioned. In modern times it has been scarcely at all known to
Europeans, and even its situation is doubtful.

INDRAGIRI.

The