health, and the effects of the air are said to be almost miraculous: the patient grows well in a short time, but constantly relapses soon after his return to Batavia. But the same situation and circumstances which render Batavia and the country round it unwholesome, render it the best gardener’s ground in the world. The soil is fruitful beyond imagination, and the conveniences and luxuries of life that it produces are almost without number. Rice, which is well known to be the corn of these countries, and to serve the inhabitants instead of bread, grows in great plenty: and I must here observe, that in the hilly parts of Java, and in many of the eastern islands, a species of this grain is planted, which in the western parts of India is entirely unknown. It is called by the natives _Paddy Gunung_, or Mountain Rice: this, contrary to the other sort which must be under water three parts in four of the time of its growth, is planted upon the sides of hills where no water but rain can come: it is however planted at the beginning of the rainy season, and reaped in the beginning of the dry. How far this kind of rice might be useful in our West Indian islands, where no bread-corn is grown, it may perhaps be worth while to enquire. Indian corn, or maize, is also produced here; which the inhabitants gather when young, and toast in the ear. Here is also a great variety of kidney-beans, and lentiles, which they called _Cadjang_, and which make a considerable part of the food of the common people; besides millet, yams both wet and dry, sweet potatoes, and European potatoes, which are very good, but not cultivated in great plenty. In the gardens, there are cabbages, lettuces, cucumbers, radishes, the white radishes of China, which boil almost as well as a turnip; carrots, parsley, celery, pigeon-peas, the egg-plant, which, broiled and eaten with pepper and salt, is very delicious; a kind of greens resembling spinnage; onions, very small, but excellent; and asparagus; besides some European plants of a strong smell, particularly sage, hyssop, and rue. Sugar is also produced here in immense quantities; very great crops of the finest and largest canes that can be imagined are produced with very little care, and yield a much larger proportion of sugar than the canes in the West Indies. White sugar is sold here at two-pence half-penny a pound; and the molasses makes the arrack, of which, as of rum, it is the chief ingredient; a small quantity of rice, and some cocoa-nut wine, being added, chiefly, I suppose, to give it flavour. A small quantity of indigo is also produced here, not as an article of trade, but merely for home-consumption. But the most abundant article of vegetable luxury here, is the fruit; of which there is no less than six-and-thirty different kinds, and I shall give a very brief account of each.