1770 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 (74d.) 
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, 
