e condition. Every individual
had been sick except the sail-maker, an old man between seventy and
eighty years of age; and it is very remarkable, that this old man,
during our stay at this place, was constantly drunk every day:[128] We
had buried seven, the surgeon, three seamen, Mr Green's servant, Tupia,
and Tayeto, his boy. All but Tupia fell a sacrifice to the unwholesome,
stagnant, putrid air of the country, and he who, from his birth, had
been used to subsist chiefly upon vegetable food, particularly ripe
fruit, soon contracted all the disorders that are incident to a sea
life, and would probably have sunk under them before we could have
completed our voyage, if we had not been obliged to go to Batavia to
refit.

[Footnote 128: Cases similar to this are of constant occurrence, and are
familiarly known to medical men who have a principle to account for it.
The _continual_ operation of exciting causes so as to produce a certain
degree of action of the system, will prevent, as well as remedy,
diseases of debility. The plague has been kept off by a like treatment
on the same principle, and so has the ague, an intermitting fever so
formidable in some countries. Giving over or abating of this stimulating
treatment, however, if other circumstances remain the same, will, of
course, render the person as obnoxious as ever to attack, or rather more
so. It is evident that at times this cure is as bad as the disease; for
scarcely any state of health is more deplorably fatal than constant
drunkenness.--E.]

SECTION XXXVIII.

_Some Account of Batavia, and the adjacent Country; with their Fruits,
Flowers, and other Productions_.

Batavia, the capital of the Dutch dominions in India, and generally
supposed to have no equal among all the possessions of the Europeans in
Asia, is situated on the north side of the island of Java, in a low
fenny plain, where several small rivers, which take their rise in the
mountains called Blaeuwen Berg, about forty miles up the country, empty
themselves into the sea, and where the coast forms a large bay, called
the Bay of Batavia, at the distance of about eight leagues from the
streight of Sunda. It lies in latitude 6 deg. 10' S., and longitude 106 deg. 50'
E. from the meridian of Greenwich, as appears from astronomical
observations made upon the spot, by the Rev. Mr Mohr, who has built an
elegant observatory, which is as well furnished with instruments as most
in Europe.[129]

[Footnote