62 EXPEDITION TO MOLUCCA ISLANDS. 



and swamps, from the small proportion of sick in Hospital, it may 

 be reckoned healthy for Europeans, though, since our possession of 

 it, the rains have been very constant. This is probably owing to 

 the effect of putrid vegetation being washed away as soon as formed. 

 Though situated in the most favourable way for uniting all the 

 resources of a rich country with an easy communication by sea to 

 foreign markets, Malacca now labours under every inconvenience 

 that an island does, without its advantages, and though it has 

 adjoining a soil capable of yielding the richest productions of even- 

 kind, and though under the dominion of an European power for 

 about 250 years, it remains, even to the foot of the lines of the 

 town, as wild and uncultivated as if there had never been a settle- 

 ment formed here ; and except by the small river that passes between 

 the fort and town, you cannot penetrate into the country in any 

 direction, above a few miles; nor is even this extent general, being 

 confined to the roads that run along the sea shore about two miles 

 each way, and one that goes inland. Mr. Coupeiius has a country 

 house about four miles on this latter road : and there were, some 

 time ago, gambier gardens, about seven miles inland, to which this 

 road led, but it is not at present cleared farther than Mr. 

 Couperus's house. There is no cultivation at present round Ma- 

 lacca but the gardens of the Chinese, and a few of the Malays, 

 who supply the town with great abundance of vegetables and 

 fruits, the varieties of which are reckoned at upwards of 100, 

 few of which are indebted, however, to cultivation, being mostly the 

 spontaneous productions of Nature. The gardens immediately next 

 the town are so choaked up with cocoanut trees that even from 

 Bocca China you can hardly see a house ; they grow indeed so 

 thick as very much to obstruct the free circulation of the air, and 

 almost entirely to keep off the land wind, which at this season is 

 the prevailing one, and very cool and pleasant. This extraordina- 

 ry want of cultivation, I am informed, is the consequence of the 

 restrictive policy of the Dutch Government of Batavia, who make 

 a point of discouraging it, in all their Settlements, the more ef- 

 fectually to render them dependant on Java, where alone they 

 promote cultivation and improvement, and from whence they sup- 

 ply all the other Settlements, even with the common necessaries of 

 life. Sugar might be cultivated here to great advantage, the cli- 



