are the
cocoa, areca, banana, papaya, white and red shaddock, mangostan,
rambootang, ananas, and betel. Saffron is collected there, and every
description of allspice. The betel is a creeping-plant with an aromatic
leaf. The natives spread over the leaf a little slaked-lime, and place
at one end a small piece of areca-nut and cardamom. They then roll the
leaf up, and masticate it for hours together. It blackens their teeth
and reddens their lips, and gives an effect which the Chinese and Malays
admire considerably.

Java abounds in serpents--the smallest is the most dangerous. Its bite
is said to cause death. It is scarcely thicker than a candle, and from
two to three feet long. They are of various colours:--some grey,
spotted with white; and others green, with bright red and white streaks.
We heard of one twenty feet long, and of the thickness of a man's arm;
and saw another stuffed, as big round as the body of a man, and about
fifteen feet long. The Javanese are likewise plagued with ants, and all
sorts of creeping things.

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 t