Years passed over their heads without any more serious variations than slight dissensions with the other slaves, occasional illness, and the frequent birth of children. Some of them resembled the father, others the mother; and some had their eyes obliquely set, like the island ancestry from whom they descended. Some were bright, some dull, some merry and some pensive; but Madame Van der Veen pronounced them all very good children; and they certainly were trained to be devotedly attentive to her. During their first years, it cost nothing to clothe them, for they ran about naked; and it required almost as little expense to furnish them with food, where rice was so easily cultivated, and plantains, cocoas and oranges grew wild. The warmth of the climate, the lavish bounty of the soil, the improvident habits which every human being must necessarily form, who acquires no property by economy, and the extreme indulgence with which he had always been treated by his gentle-hearted mistress, all conspired to render Jan forgetful of the precarious tenure by which he held the external blessings of his mere animal existence. Sometimes, when he went to Grésik, he passed by a slave-auction, and the sight always gave him a pang; for it brought up a picture of Zaida and her children standing there amid the indecent jests and rude handling of a crowd of men. Sometimes he witnessed despotic and cruel treatment of slaves, and still more frequently he heard of such instances. Then came recollections of the lashes and shrieks, that used to interrupt his music and merriment in the days of courtship; and always they brought with them the question, “What if Zaida and our daughters should ever be sold to such people as that cruel Dutchman and his jealous wife?” While any instances were fresh in his mind, he listened attentively to whatever was said about slavery by his master and the English family. From them he learned how the English, during their brief possession of Java, had interdicted slave traffic with the neighbouring islands; had passed laws forbidding slaves to be sold, except with their own consent; and had allowed them to hold, as their own, any property they were able to acquire. Mr. Van der Veen tried to excuse the Dutch for renewing their slave-trade, by urging that it was a necessity imposed upon them, because there was no other method of procuring servants. The Englishman denied any such necessity. He maintained that the natives of Java were intelligent, teachable and honest, and very willing to render services for money. He highly commended the native princes for never permitting any of their own people to be slaves. He told of one of those princes, who had inherited fifty slaves; but when the British Government declared that all should become free, unless publicly registered by their masters, within a specified time, he said, “Then I will _not_ register my slaves. They shall be free. I have kept them hitherto, because it was the custom, and