EARLY HISTORY OF JATA. 



21 



to be cliarmed by the nice blending of vowels and 

 consonants whenever a word is pronounced in his 

 presence. Tlie only difficult thing in this language 

 is, that words of widely different meaning sometimes 

 are so similar that, at first, one may be mistaken for 

 another. Every European in all the Netherlands 

 India speaks Malay. It is the only language used in 

 addressing servants ; and all the European children 

 born on these islands leai^n it from their Malay 

 nurses long before they are able to speak the lan- 

 guage of their parents. Such chikli'en generaEy fi tid 

 it difficult to make the hai-sh, guttural sounds of the 

 Butch language, and the Malays themselves are 

 never able to speak it well ; and, for the same 

 reason, Dutchmen seldom speak Malay as eoiTectly as 

 Englishmen and Frenchmen. 



We are now off the ancient city of Bantam, and 

 we natui-ally here review the voyages of the earliest 

 European na^dgators in these seas, and the piincipal 

 events in the ancient history of this rich island of 

 Java. 



The word Java, or, more correctly, *^Jawa," is 

 the name of the people who originally lived only in 

 the eastern part of the island, but, in more modem 

 times, they have spread over the whole island, and 

 given it theii* name. The Chinese claim to have 

 known it in ancient times, and caU it Chi-po or 

 Cha-po, which is as near Jawa as theii' pronuncia- 

 tion of most foreign names at the present day. 



It was first made known to the Western world by 

 that gi-eat ti-aveller, Marco Polo, in his description 

 of the lands he saw or passed ^vhile on Ms voyage 



