i7?o SLAVES 405 



The laws and customs regarding the punishment of slaves 

 are these. A master may punish his slaves as far as he 

 thinks proper by stripes, but should death be the consequence, 

 he is called to a very severe account ; if the fact is proved, 

 very rarely escaping with life. There is, however, an officer 

 in every quarter of the town called marineu, who is a kind of 

 constable. He attends to quell all riots, takes up all people 

 guilty of crimes, etc., but is more particularly utilised for 

 apprehending runaway slaves, and punishing them for that 

 or any other crime for which their master thinks they 

 deserve a greater punishment than he chooses to inflict. 

 These punishments are inflicted by slaves bred up to the 

 business : on men they are inflicted before the door of their 

 master's house : on women, for decency's sake, within it. 

 The punishment is stripes, in number according to custom 

 and the nature of the crime, with rods made of split rattans, 

 which fetch blood at every stroke. Consequently they may 

 be, and sometimes are, very severe. A common punishment 

 costs the master of the slave a rix-dollar (4s.), and a severe 

 one about a ducatoon (6s. 8d.) For their encouragement, 

 however, and to prevent them from stealing, the master of 

 every slave is obliged to give him three dubblecheys (*7|-d.) 

 a week. 



Extraordinary as it may seem, there are very few Javans, 

 that is descendants of the original inhabitants of Java, who 

 live in the neighbourhood of Batavia, but there are as many 

 sorts of Indians as there are countries the Dutch import 

 slaves from ; either slaves made free or descendants of such. 

 They are all called by the name of oran slam, or Isalam, 

 a name by which they distinguish themselves from all other 

 religions, the term signifying believers of the true faith. 

 They are again subdivided into innumerable divisions, the 

 people from each country keeping themselves in some degree 

 distinct from the rest. The dispositions generally observed 

 in the slaves are, however, visible in the freemen, who 

 completely inherit the different vices or virtues of their 

 respective countries. 



Many of these employ themselves in cultivating gardens, 



