r and
camphor, which were the only commodities there for trade, greatly
declined; and commerce, which was all-important to the East India
Company, almost entirely disappeared after its establishment for some
few years. It was a miserable place from all accounts, and was described
by Captain James Lowe, in 1836, "as an expensive port, and of no use to
any nation that might possess it," and he only echoed what was
previously said of it by William Dampier, who had once been there in the
humble position of a gunner, that it was "a sorry place, sorrily
governed, and very unhealthy." So unhealthy was it, that it became
necessary as early as 1714 to remove the Residency and offices to a
point of land about two miles further off the coast, which was called
Fort Marlborough; but even this locality was found not to be beyond the
reach of malaria, and the place continued, as Crawfurd says, to be more
or less unhealthy down to the cession of the settlement in 1825. But it
had, however, done its work in providing for us a firm footing in those
seas, and was a help to the next step in our progress towards a wider
empire.

It is important to relate here that its last Lieut.-Governor was the
founder of our now important settlement of Singapore. He took up the
appointment at Bencoolen on the 20th March, 1818, founded Singapore in
1819, returned to Bencoolen in 1820, and finally left for England in
1824.

It is not our present purpose to dwell upon the intellectual and moral
greatness of this remarkable man, for full justice has been done to his
memory in the recent account of his life by Demetrius Boulger, and by an
impressive tribute to his worth by General Sir Andrew Clarke, R.E.,
G.C.M.G., in a paper read by him in May last at the Royal Institution.

It is of course impossible at this late date to trace what was done in
connection with the convicts on their first arrival at this settlement,
though we gather from old letters that they were employed principally
upon road-making, and on clearing estates which, "owing to their owners
having died intestate, had reverted to the State." They were also let
out to planters on a guarantee as to their not quitting the settlement.

The first authentic information we have in regard to the management and
treatment of these convicts is from a letter to the Government by Sir
Stamford Raffles, written from Bencoolen in 1818; which we give bodily
from his Life, written by his widow in 1830. It is