History
In pre-colonial times, the original inhabitants of Singapore, the aboriginal biduanda orang kallang, lived in the swamps at the mouth of the Kallang River, and fished from their boats, seldom venturing out into the open sea. At the time when Sir Stamford Raffles landed in Singapore in 1819, half of the population of 1,000 were orang kallang.
Kallang River is the place, too, where in the early days the Bugis traders from Sulawesi (Celebes) unloaded their cargoes of spices and tortoise shells, gold dust and slaves from their palari or their leteh-leteh. These sailing boats were a common sight off the sea front even up to the 1960s.
Today, this long, winding river has little or no industry except for a short distance, although a new industrial estate at Kallang Basin, near Kallang Bahru, has been built.
Read more about this topic: Kallang River
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)