Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalof283018951897roya).pdf/23

 MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN FRANCIS LIGHT, WHO FOUNDED PENANG.

RANCIS LIGHT was born at "Dallington (? Dal- lingho) in Suffolk" about 1745, and came to the East at an early age in the Marine Service of the East India Co.

There is scarcely one of our Straits worthies of whom so few personal particulars are known. He has of course left official records, and several of his private letters have been printed and preserved. There is also the official Diary he kept during the first few months in Penang, which is printed in Logan's Journal Vol. III; but this is all. Captain LIGHT belongs to the "active period of the Straits, to which, as in other places, the "literary period" succeeded. The latter began with MARSDEN and LEYDEN of "many-languaged lore," who commenced his journeys in Sumatra and the Peninsula in 1805. During the next fifty years there was no lack of scholars and writers in these countries.

But before their time almost the only English literature of the Far East consisted of accounts by ship captains, like DAMPIER and FORREST, of their own and others' voyages. In these narratives there is much that is useful; but we miss the literary side and the personal details that make LEYDEN, MARSDEN and RAFFLES seem so much more familiar to us than their predecessors.

The first heard of Captain LIGHT is in 1771, when he states he entered into correspondence with WARREN HASTINGS as to the desirability of a repairing harbour in these waters, recommending Penang as a "convenient magazine for the Eastern trade." There was no doubt negotiation for many years after in the intervals of trading tours.