When Penang was first occupied it was almost uninhabited, and the whole island was covered with the densest jungle, but it was not long before Captain Light, who was appointed the first Superintendent of Trade, made a road to the highest point of the island, then called "Bel retiro" but now Penang Hill.[2] A great part of the island was soon cleared and roads made, so that in 1792, seven years after it came into our hands, Captain Light was able to report that the population had increased to 10,000 souls; this increase of population has been steadily going on from year to year, until, with its dependencies, Penang, after a little more than a century, now numbers no less than 240,000. [Footnote 2: There is an old legend in the island that Captain Light, in order to encourage the Malays in the work of cutting down the jungle, pointed a cannon in the direction in which he required it to be cleared, then he loaded it with powder, and instead of a shot he put in several dollars, and firing it off he called out to the Malays, "Now you may have all you can find." It is said that the eager contest which ensued, of one endeavouring to get the money before another, led to a regular scramble, which considerably helped forward the work.] Since 1825, when the Indian convicts from Bencoolen were added to those already on the island, their labour was almost wholly turned to account in the construction of roads both on the island and in the province; but about 1850 some intramural work was also undertaken. The gangs in the province were at last taught to cut and burn the jungle as well as to construct the roads, and the records say at some risk from tigers which infested the province in those days, and occasionally carried off a straggler from the gangs at work. They were also bitten in large numbers by the venomous hamadryads which used to abound there, and from the poison of which some died. About the time our treatise commences, Penang had acquired the monopoly of the trade of the Malayan Peninsula and Sumatra. It also had a large traffic with China, Siam, Borneo, the Celebes, and other places in the Eastern Archipelago; but after the establishment later on of Singapore it had begun to decline, and the settlement then became second only in commercial importance. But within the last quarter of a century the trade has considerably revived, owing largely to the planting of tobacco in Sumatra by European planters, and the annexation of the native states of the Malayan Peninsula, both of which have constituted Penang the chief shipping centre for their produce.