Federated Malay States Railways : pamphlet of ... - Sabrizain.org

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Penang-Singapore Mail Train.
plainly visible on the east side an oval-headed entry
pierced in the wall, forming part of the original
structure of the wall, but later filled with laterite
blocks and its outside plastered over. The inner
side of this entry is a winding oval-headed passage,
which came out through the west wall of the gate-
way, but is now blocked up. The suggestion is
therefore put forward that originally the wall had a
passage deviously built through it, whose outer and
inner entrances were these oval-headed entries, as
shown on the plan, and that later this greater
gateway was superimposed by the Dutch at this
point, and the wall cut through to admit of the wide
passage through the gateway which now exists.
Another structural mystery is visible to a person
standing on the east of the gateway in that the
whole block divides as thus seen into three parts, a
centre solid wall (pierced by the now blocked
passage) laid back from the perpendicular so that
the outer face has a slope. On to this wall have
been clapped the back and the front of the gate-
way, whose faces are perpendicular and their backs
sloping, so that, seen in section, their base is
narrow and their top broad. The turrets on the
— 36 —
gateway are brick. The wall against which the
gateway leans is laterite stone. The roof of the
devious oval-headed passage is stone. The roof
of the gateway is brick. The question at once
arises—are the little narrow flat bricks Dutch only,
or did the Portuguese use a similar brick ? A
trustworthy answer to that question would solve
many an archaeological problem in Malacca. All
about the ancient gateway in the crevices of the
stone grows maidenhair fern. Of all the matchless
Malacca, a fortress second only to Goa, there
remains just this old gate, though bastion Santiago
can be placed, on the edge of the sea, in a line with
the gate, for there are still a few blocks of stone
under the grass, and the eye of faith can even
discern the shape of the bastion's angle.
Continuing along Fort Terrace—which is on
the site of the vanished fortress wall—we come to
the old cemetery where the officers who died in
the Naning War in 1831 are commemorated by an
obelisk. The tombs here are mostly of the English
period. Opposite the cemetery is the Police
Station, at whose entrance lie laterite blocks
marking the course of the walls still, nor is it
difficult to trace them through the grounds and
across the road on the other side of the Police
Station until the modern French Church obliterates
the last traces.
Though the fortress itself was a strong place,
the Portuguese were not content with it alone, and
on Saint John's Hill— which is a few minutes away
along the road down the coast—they built a fort.
This is now in stone and brick, and it is not known
whether, as it stands, it is Portuguese or Dutch.
The inscription over the entrance was stolen by
some local Goth, and no record of what it said now
remains. The best access to this fort is by turning
to the left at the gaol and following that road to
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