Piracy is an evil which the Colonial Fleet is specially designed to check, and it used to be very bad at one time before the Ballinese War of 1845. In the year before this, a Dutch merchantman, the _Overyssel_, stranded on the coast of Bally, and the crew were massacred, and ship and cargo looted by the Ballinese. This led to three expeditions; one in 1845, another, which was undertaken with an insufficient force and ended in disaster to the Dutch, in 1847, and the third and final one, successfully carried out by an army of 10,000 men and six warships, together with 6000 auxiliary troops from the island of Lombok. But while piracy was thus put down to the east of Java, the Atchinese pirates grew bolder than ever in the west, and complaints from Malay traders who were Netherlands subjects became more and more frequent. Numerous punitive expeditions were sent against the piratical Rajas in the north-west of Sumatra, but in most cases the real culprits escaped. At last, about 1873, the Government resolved to put an end to this state of things, and a force under General van Swieten seized the Kraton, or chief fortress. General van der Heyden took over the command in 1877, and soon captured and fortified Kota Raja, and two years later, though his troops suffered heavily from the climate, he had the whole country of Atchin subdued. The Home Government, however, misled by the apparent submission of the enemy, did away with military rule before they had made certain that no treachery was meditated, and on the arrival of a civil Governor all the advantages which had been won were again lost, and at last a state of war had to be proclaimed once more. From that time onward the Atchinese War became a chronic disease, but since an aggressive policy was adopted in 1898 the war party in Atchin has rapidly diminished, and it is now almost extinct. Fighting of a guerilla kind is reported from time to time, but peace is so far restored that the General is able to send some of his men home, and the people can cultivate their rice-fields and pepper-gardens unmolested. They are for the most part well disposed towards the Dutch, whose officers, in their proclamations, have always been careful to explain that the war was only against the murderers and robbers who made the coasts and country unsafe, and that no one would be harmed so long as he went peacefully about his business. Piracy on the Atchinese coast is now also a thing of the past, and will be so as long as the Government remains firm.