In the original manuscript of Godinho de Eredia, of date 1613, reproduced by Janssen in 1882, he says that "Paramisura," the first king of the Malays, settled on the coast near to the Bukit China River, which is close to the present town, and called it "Malaka," after the fruit of a tree which grew there. (See sketch from that old work, Plate IV.) Anyway, like all Malay history, it is full of obscurity, and it really does not concern us very much just now as to what it is really derived from, though it would be no doubt interesting to Malay scholars to pursue the inquiry. We know, however, on the best authority, that it was the first settlement formed by a European power in those seas. The Portuguese, in their palmy days under Albuquerque, took it from a Malay Sultan, named Mahomed Shah, in 1511. They kept quiet possession of it for 134 years, when it fell into the hands of the Dutch, who held it for seventy-four years; then the British took possession in 1795, restored it to the Dutch in 1818, who gave it back in 1824, and we have held it ever since. In size it is forty-two miles long and from eight to twenty-five miles broad, and contains 659 square miles. In the old Portuguese days it was a very important place of trade, so much so that De Barros, their famous historian, wrote of it that, "the native town was a good league in length along the shore, and that there were many merchant vessels there from Calicut, Aden, Mecca, Java, and Pegu, and other places." This splendid trade, however, began to decline in the time of the Dutch, and shortly after we had opened Penang in 1785 it had almost entirely vanished. [Illustration: OLD MALACCA (From Godinho de Eredia's Work). _Plate IV._] [Illustration: ALBUQUERQUE (From Godinho de Eredia's Work). _Plate V._] The Portuguese must have attached great value to this their first settlement in what was then known as the "Golden Chersonese," for they spent vast sums of money in fortifying it, and enclosed a considerable enceinte by a wall of great height and thickness, and crowned the small hill of St. Paul's within by the erection of a fine cathedral dedicated to our Lady Del-Monte, with a monastery annexed to it. These fortifications were afterwards razed to the ground, and some of the old foundations may still be seen; but we left the buildings standing and the greater part of the cathedral to go to ruins. Some of the tombstones in the old nave bear the date 1515, and there is a tomb to the two Bishops of Japan, but there is nothing to indicate that the saintly St. Francis Xavier laboured here beyond a small tablet; but the memory of his deeds is yet fresh amongst the traditions of the Portuguese descendants still resident there.