iSo SPICY ISLANDS. 



iflanci in 162 1, and that the cloves lay three or four inches thick 

 on the ground, for want of people to gather them. 



Batchian rifes to a confiderable height, fwells into waved 

 eminences, and in fome parts into hills terminating in points, 

 and well wooded. On the greater part of its coafts, as of all the 

 Moluccas^ and other iflands in the various Indian archipelago, 

 are prodigious rocks or coral reefs, of infinite variety and 



beauty. 



The Sooloo^ and other fleets which fail annually to cruife 

 among the Philippines, depend folely for their fubfiflence on the 

 fiQi, and fliell fifli, which the reefs afford, and only lay in fome 

 rice and fago bread. Mr. Forrejl gives a view, in plate 5, of a 

 coral rock off Batchian, and a man gathering the Gigantic Chama* 

 Among other (liells there reprefented, is a figure of a turbinated 

 one of a great fize. 



I AM uncertain of the number of parts into which this ifland 

 is divided. In the map, on the weftern fide is ftreight Labuhat; 

 I do not know whether it penetrates quite through. On this is 

 fort Barnevelt, the fortrefs that awes the Batcbians. A little 

 Isle or Bally, farther to the north is a great bay, with the ifle of Bally in 

 the middle, in Lat. 0° 30' fouth ; it is about two miles round, 

 and well fupplied with wood and vv^atcr. At the bottom of the 

 bay is a very narrow paffage, that divides Batchian in two ; the 

 northern divifion is called the ifle of Mandioly, the refidence of 

 the fultan. The paffage widens confiderably towards the weft, 

 and opens in the fireights of Patientia, which divide this ifland 

 from the great one of Gilolo. I think Mandioly to be the ifland 

 Fitzherberty in Purchas, calls old Bacban, The Portuguefe and 



Spaniards 



