In 1800, the first Lieutenant-Governor of the Prince of Wales Island, Sir George Leith, gained a strip of Seberang Perai from the Kedah Sultan and renamed it Province Wellesley. The newly acquired land covered an area south of the Perai River, turning the river into the international border between the British-controlled Province Wellesley and Kedah. At the time, Province Wellesley was heavily forested and sparsely populated, with a total population of only 5,000. In exchange to this acquisition, the annual payment to the Kedah Sultan was increased to 10,000 Spanish dollars per annum. To this day, the Malaysian federal government still pays Kedah, on behalf of Penang, RM10,000 annually as a symbolic gesture.