with a copious river serpentizing through it, in a stream of so
easy and gentle a current that the water with great facility
was capable of being conducted at pleasure; a tract of
country holding out such easy means of being intersected by
canals and ditches, and embellished with fish ponds ; of being
..converted into gardens and villas, where draw-bridges for
ornament and trek-schuyts for pleasure and convenience could
be adopted, presented temptations too strong for Dutch taste
to resist. Nothing, however, can possibly be more gratifying
to the eye than the general appearance of the country
which surrounds Batavia. Here no aridity, no sterility, no
nakedness even partially intervene between the plantations
of coffee, sugar, pepper, rice, and other valuable products,
which are enclosed and divided by trees of the choicest
fruits. In the immediate vicinity of the city, the extensive
gardens of the Dutch, embellished with villas in the Oriental
style, furnished with every convenience that a luxurious and
voluptuous taste can suggest, are charming to behold from a
little distance, but do not improve by a nearer acquaintance.
The vitiated taste of Holland, delighting in straight avenues,
trimmed hedges, myrtles and other evergreens cut into the
malls o f Troy, and flower-beds laid out in circles, squares,
and polygons, are no less offensive to the eye than the numerous
ditches and fish-ponds, from their stench and exhalations,
are injurious to the health, besides being the nurseries
of an innumerable host of frogs and mosquitoes.
* In carrying into execution the plan of their new city, the
first operation of the Dutch was to divide the river into two
branches, in such manner as to insulate a quadrangular space
of ground ; and just within these new channels, which served
as a wet ditch, to erect a wall of the height of about twenty
feet, chiefly of coral rock. This wall they flanked with
twenty redoubts or irregular projections, some of them mounting
three guns, some two, and others none. Four great
gates, with as many draw-bridges, communicated with the
four suburbs. The citadel or the castle stands on the north
side, or that next to the bay, without the walls of the city,
being surrounded with its own wall from twenty-five to thirty
feet high; and its four bastions, to denote the wealth and
magnificence of the settlement, bear the splendid names of
the Diamond, the Pearl, the Sapphire, and the Ruby.: their
materials, however, like those of the city wall, are chiefly
composed of calcareous coral rock. The government house,
a neat chapel, and nearly all the public offices, are within the
•enclosure of the castie.' The different canals that surround
and intersect the town, uniting just below the citadel, form a
wide navigable river that flows in a gentle current into the
bay. Across this river is thrown a wooden boom, a little bel
o w the castle, and opposite to the custom-house; and at a
short distance farther down, on the west side, is the Loo fort,
mounting seven or eight guns, all pointing down the river.
On the opposite or eastern side there is also a battery as well
as an extensive line, flanked with several redoubts, intended to
cover the various magazines and stores, the gunpowder mills,
saw-mills, timber-yard, foundery for casting cannon, with all
the work-shops of the different artificers belonging to this one»
splendid establishment.