GOVERNMENT.

The government of it was (in October 1808) in the hands of the Tuanku Pangeran, brother to the Raja, who in consequence of some civil disturbance had withdrawn to the entrance of the river.  His name is not mentioned, but from the Transactions of the Batavian Society we learn that the prince who reigned about the year 1780 was Raja Ismael, “one of the greatest pirates in those seas.”  The maritime power of the kingdom of Siak has always been considerable, and in the history of the Malayan states we repeatedly read of expeditions fitted out from thence making attacks upon Johor, Malacca, and various other places on the two coasts of the peninsula.  Most of the neighbouring states (or rivers) on the eastern coast of Sumatra, from Langat to Jambi, are said to have been brought in modern times under its subjection.

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.