The immense ware-houses, running from street to street, situated on the great canal and river, leading into the bay, which were once burdened with merchandise, are now scantily filled, or nearly empty; and there are but few places so large as Batavia, in the present day, which show less signs of an active commerce, less bustle on the quays, or exhibit a greater degree of dulness, and want of bustle in the streets. This is owing, in part, to the belligerent attitude of Holland and Belgium; the alarming war with the Sumatrans; the establishment of a free port by the British; but more particularly, to the narrow-contracted views of the government, in regard to commerce. The Dutch government wish to drive all foreign commerce from their ports in Netherlands’ India, with the exception of the native traders of the Indian isles; and to extend, if it be possible, their unjust and iniquitous system of monopolies, and of forced cultivation, upon the natives, which have so often driven them to despair and revolt, causing whole districts, containing many thousands, to abandon their lands and their homes, and fly to the fastnesses of the mountains, or to what are called the native provinces--preferring a very precarious mode of living, to being made the worst of slaves to the worst of masters, by being forced to cultivate coffee, and then to sell it for about half its fair market value, to the Dutch company, leaving them, in fact, no means of support. Old Batavia is but the shadow of what it was in former days. It was once called the “Queen of the East;” her merchants were “princes of the earth,” in point of wealth, and lived in a style of magnificence, which far surpassed every other to the eastward of the cape of Good Hope, with the exception, in more modern days, of Calcutta. A traveller, visiting Batavia at the present day, inquires for the splendid palaces, noble avenues of trees, and neat canals, with the gay pleasure-boats, which used to be seen sporting on their surface, accompanied with music, and graced with numberless enchanting females. He then visits the most fashionable streets of former days, and a truly painful sight is presented at every step: of choked canals covered with slime, and green stagnant pools, a resort of frogs and snakes, and other reptiles. The noble avenues of trees, which led to splendid habitations, and the heavy, massive gateways, are still seen; but the houses are either crumbling in the dust, or else a miserable palm-leaf hovel encumbers the space they once ornamented. But the gay inhabitants, who once gave life and animation to these fair scenes, where are they? Alas! fled with “the years beyond the flood.” Their bodies lie mouldering, not only in the tens of thousands, or even the hundreds of thousands, but in the millions of graves which occupy, for many miles in extent, the city and its suburbs.