t eight o'clock, which is the usual hour of
breakfast. This is generally a solid meal of dried meat, fish, and
poultry, made into curries, eggs, rice, strong beer, and spirits.
_Currie_ and rice is a standing dish at all meals, and at all seasons of
the year, being considered as an excellent stimulus to the stomach. The
business of the day occupies little more than a couple of hours, from
ten to twelve, when he again sits down to dinner, a meal that is
somewhat more solid than the breakfast. From table he retires to sleep,
and remains invisible till about five in the evening, when he rises and
prepares for a ride or a walk, from which he uniformly returns to a
smoking-hot supper." So much for the portly Dutchman at Batavia,--a sort
of animal not unsuccessfully emulated, as to substantials, by a certain
_genus_ in some islands of the West Indies!-E.]

Women, however, of all nations, are permitted to settle here, without
coming under any restrictions; yet we were told that there were not,
when we arrived at Batavia, twenty women in the place that were born in
Europe, but that the white women, who were by no means scarce, were
descendants from European parents of the third or fourth generation, the
gleanings of many families who had successively come hither, and in the
male line become extinct; for it is certain that, whatever be the cause,
this climate is not so fatal to the ladies as to the other sex.

These women imitate the Indians in every particular; their dress is made
of the same materials, their hair is worn in the same manner, and they
are equally enslaved by the habit of chewing betel.

The merchants carry on their business here with less trouble perhaps
than in any other part of the world: Every manufacture is managed by the
Chinese, who sell the produce of their labour to the merchant resident
here, for they are permitted to sell it to no one else; so that when a
ship comes in, and bespeaks perhaps a hundred leagers of arrack, or any
quantity of other commodities, the merchant has nothing to do but to
send orders to his Chinese to see them delivered on board: He obeys the
command, brings a receipt, signed by the master of the ship, for the
goods to his employer, who receives the money, and having deducted his
profit, pays the Chinese his demand. With goods that are imported,
however, the merchant has a little more trouble, for these he must
examine, receive, and lay up in his warehouse, according to the pract