approach, also two forts on the heights, and one battery on a tongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire. When the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms, and left there to decompose. The town at the time of the Rajah's visit, was in a condition of squalid wretchedness—the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes. The Sultan was a man past fifty years of age, short and puffy in person, with a countenance indicative of imbecility. In his journal the Rajah wrote: His right hand is garnished with an extra diminutive thumb, the natural member being crooked and distorted.[104] His mind, indexed by his face, seems to be a chaos of confusion, without dignity and without good sense. He can neither read nor write, is guided by the last speaker; and his advisers, as might be expected, are of the lower order, and mischievous from their ignorance and their greediness. He is always talking, and generally joking; and the most serious subjects never meet with five minutes' consecutive attention. His rapacity is carried to such an excess as to astonish a European, and is evinced in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were unquestionably handsome, but he was not content without begging from me the share I had reserved for the other pangirans; and afterwards solicited mere trifles such as sugar, pen-knives, and the like. To crown all he was incessantly asking what was left in the vessel, and when told the truth—that I was stripped bare as a tree in winter—he frequently returned to the charge.