If, on the other hand, we assume that the Malays conferred the name to the island, they would in all probability have given it from their word "Singgah," which means "a place to stop at," or "to bait by the way," and as the embouchure of the Singapore river formed a commodious and sheltered retreat for their rowing and sailing prahus, this view is not inappropriate, the more especially as the affix "pura," meaning a city, had been known to them from the earliest times, and of which we have one instance at least from their original home of Sumatra, in the naming of their kingdom of Indrapura, which was, as Marsden says, "for a long time, from 1400 A.D., the seat of a monarchy of some consideration and extent." The island is about twenty-seven miles long by fourteen broad, and contains an area of 206 square miles, and therefore is somewhat larger than the Isle of Wight. It is separated from the mainland of Johore by what is known as "The Old Straits," from its having been the only channel used in the early days by vessels bound eastward. The island was first settled upon, according to Balfour, "in A.D. 1160, by one Sri Sura Bawana," and from an inscription on a sandstone rock at the mouth of the Singapore River, now unfortunately destroyed, it would appear that Rajah Suran, of Amdan Nagara, after conquering the state of Johore with certain natives of India (Klings), proceeded in 1201 to a country then called "Tamask," and afterwards returned to "Kling," leaving the stone inscription in memory of his visit and victory. To have conquered Johore, the Rajah's vessels must have sailed by the Old Straits; but we have no record as to where "Tamask" was situated, and it is not given in the oldest Atlases we have been able to consult, viz. by D'Anville and others, though it may be in the charts of the 14th and 15th centuries. It seems more probable that the expedition set out from Java or Sumatra, to which places Hindus had, as we know, in very remote times proceeded from India, as the old ruins they have left there of their temples, supposed to be of the 7th century, plainly prove. Sir Stamford Raffles, as we have already stated when treating of Bencoolen, took up the appointment of Lieutenant-Governor of that settlement on the 22nd March, 1818, and he had not been there long before he recognized the fact that British interests needed a trading centre somewhere in the Straits of Malacca. It was, he said, "not that any extension of territory was necessary, but the aim of Government should be to acquire somewhere in the Straits a commercial station with a military guard, and that, when once formed, it was his belief that it would soon maintain a successful rivalry with a neighbouring Power, who would be obliged either to adopt a liberal system of free trade, or see the trade of these seas collected under the British flag."