414 DESCRIPTION OF BATAVIA CHAP. XVII 
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 
Ldele Heeren, and by the corruption of the English Jdoleers, 
in respect to whom every one who meets them in a, carriage 
