eilings, but they are
harmless, and catch flies. I do not know how it is, and it may be
thought a strange taste, but I rather affection the lizard. His frugal
habits, his unobtrusive manners, and that cunning blink of his bright
black eyes, have taken away that aversion which is a natural sentiment
towards that species of animals "which crawl upon the belly;" and upon
the whole, must confess I consider him, despite his ugly tail, a very
proper _domestic_ animal; more so than many other gluttonous pets.

Tigers, it is true, are said to prowl about at night, seeking something
to devour, but I never encountered one, else I might not have been here
to write about them. Crocodiles infest the stream that winds around and
about the Malay houses. But they do not appear to hold them in dread,
for I have seen men, women, children and crocodiles in the same water,
and at the same time. That they, the crocodiles, are not converts to
Malthus, is pretty apparent, from the number of _tender_ infants they
permit to be added to the census of the Malay population.

Upon the whole, there was something about Anger peculiarly pleasing
to me; whether that it had been the "first of Eastern lands" I had
trodden upon, or there could have been any thing conducive to the
"dolce-far-niente" feeling in its atmosphere, but I felt as if I
could have laid back and smoked segars in Mynheer's porch for the
remainder of my days--

"The world forgetting, by the world forgot."

Don't know how long the feeling would have lasted had I indulged it _ad
libitum_; but I certainly did enjoy the few hours passed there in a
kind of dreamy abstraction, which approached the pleasure of the
opium-eater's reverie.

The Island of Java, sometimes called "Great," on account of Balie having
once been called by the same name, is nearly five hundred miles in
length, and a place of considerable importance in the commercial world;
that part of it occupied by the Dutch, producing coffee, rice, and
"straits produce." Batavia, the principal settlement, is a city of
considerable importance, only about sixty miles by land from Anger, a
communication being kept up by post between the two places. It is
described as a very populous and beautiful city, but of a climate, at
certain seasons, deadly to Europeans. The Governor-General of the Dutch
possessions in the East Indies, resides at Batavia, and it is the depot
of the Dutch trade. It is well known that the English possessed