While we lay at Batavia, I was constantly on shore with Newman. The Roads of Batavia are rather more than a quarter of a league from the city, and are guarded from the prevailing winds by a dozen small islands outside them. The ground on which the city stands bears evident signs of having been thrown up by the sea, but rises gradually to the mountains ten leagues off behind it. The River Jacatra runs through the city, and it is intersected likewise in all directions by canals. It has also a moat running round it, as likewise a wall of coral-rock. Its defences consist of twenty bastions, and a castle near the sea, with a mud-bank in front of it. It is, indeed, completely a Dutch city. But besides its numberless canals and ditches, as it is situated in a dead marshy flat, and is surrounded with dirty fens, bogs, and morasses, over which a tropical sun sends down its burning rays, drawing up noxious vapours of every description, it may be considered, taken all in all, as one of the most unhealthy cities of the civilised world. By care and proper drainage these defects might be amended, and, as the general temperature of the atmosphere is not excessive, it might become as healthy as any other place in those regions. Java is about two hundred miles long and forty broad, and has numerous deep inlets along the northern coast, where ships may anchor during the good or south-east monsoon. A chain of mountains, from which a number of rivers descend to the sea, runs down the centre, and divides the island into two parts. The air is cooled by the sea-breezes, which, as in the West Indies, set in every day. The soil is particularly rich. It is cultivated by buffaloes, and in some places one is sufficient to drag a plough. Java produces rice of a first-rate quality, sugar in abundance, cotton in considerable quantities, salt, timber, indigo, coffee, pepper, and various kinds of spices.