414 DESCRIPTION OF BATAVIA CHAP, xvn 



where a man has been buried. Thus their burying-grounds 

 in the neighbourhood of Batavia cover many hundred acres, 

 on which account the Dutch, grudging the quantity of 

 ground laid waste by this method, will only sell them land 

 for it at enormous prices ; notwithstanding which they will 

 always raise money to purchase grounds, whenever they can 

 find the Dutch in a humour to sell them ; and actually had 

 while we were there a great deal of land intended for that 

 purpose, but not yet begun upon. Their funerals are 

 attended with much purchased and some real lamentations ; 

 the relations of the deceased attending as well as women 

 hired to weep. The corpse is nailed up in a large thick 

 wooden coffin, not made of planks, but hollowed out of a 

 trunk of a tree. This is let down into the grave and then 

 surrounded with eight or ten inches of their mortar or 

 chinam as it is called, which in a short time becomes as 

 hard as a stone, so that the bones of the meanest among 

 them are more carefully preserved from injury than those of 

 our greatest and most respected people. 



Of the Government here I can say but very little, only 

 that a great subordination is kept up ; every man who is able 

 to keep house having a certain rank acquired by the length of 

 his services to the Company, which ranks are distinguished 

 by the ornaments of the coaches and dresses of the coach- 

 man ; for instance, one must ride in a plain coach, another 

 paints his coach with figures and gives his driver a laced hat, 

 another gilds his coach, etc. 



The Governor-General who resides here is superior over 

 all the Dutch Governors and other officers in the East 

 Indies, who, to a man, are obliged to come to him at Batavia 

 to have their accounts passed. If they are found to have 

 been at all negligent or faulty, it is a common practice to 

 delay them here one, two or three years, according to the 

 pleasure of the Governor ; for no one can leave the place 

 without his consent. Next to the Governor-General are the 

 Raaden van Indie, or members of the Council, called here 

 Edele Heeren, and by the corruption of the English Idoleers, 

 in respect to whom every one who meets them in a carriage 



