Having given a faint sketch of the mode of life of the rulers of this wealth-giving island, I must briefly describe the native inhabitants, as also some of the numerous tribes which flock there from other quarters. As I have already observed, the native princes, the nominal governors of the greater part of the country, are kept in the most perfect subjection by the Company; and the common Javanese are in the most abject state of slavery. The labourer is not only obliged, at fixed periods, to deliver a certain quantity of the fruits of his industry to the regent placed over him on behalf of the Company, for whatever price the latter chooses to allow him, and that price, moreover, paid in goods, which are charged to him at ten times their real value; but he likewise cannot consider what may remain as his own property, not being permitted to do with it what he may think fit, nor allowed to sell it to others at a higher or a lower rate; on the contrary, he is compelled to part with this also, as well as with what the Company claimed of him, to the same petty tyrant, at an arbitrary price, very much below its real value. The Javanese, like all people living under a torrid zone and a despotic government, are of an indolent disposition, and, it is said, require great excitement to make them work; but the real secret of their idleness is the certainty that they will not be allowed to enjoy the fruits of their labour. Possessing no certain property, they are satisfied with little. The food of those who inhabit the level country is rice and fish; but those who dwell in the mountains use a root called _tallas_, with salt. This salt they make out of the ashes of wood. Their dwellings are little huts, constructed of bamboos, plastered with mud, and thatched with broad leaves. Their furniture consists of a bedstead made of bamboos, a block on which to pound their rice, two pots for boiling food, and a few cocoa-nut shells for drinking. They seldom live much beyond their fiftieth year. They were converted to Islamism about 1406, when the Arabian Chick-Ibn Molana came over, and, marrying the daughter of the king of Damak, received as her portion the province of Cheribon. Their mosques are generally of wood, and perfectly unadorned; but the tomb and mosque of the said Ibn Molana form a magnificent edifice. They do not place their dead in coffins, but wrap them in linen, and place a stone at the head and another at the foot of the grave, as seats for the two angels who, after their death, examine into their conduct while in this world.