THE ISLAND OF JAVA. , i8i 
mentation into manure. Nor do the sea breezes, wiiicli in 
most of the tropical situations are cool and refr eshing, afford 
any relief to Batavia. It is true they set in pretty regularly 
about ten in the morning, and continue till four or five in the 
afternoon ; and the land breeze comes from the mountains 
towards nine or ten in the evening, continuing at intervals till 
day-break : but, as I have already observed, both the one 
and the other, in passing over the intermediate marshy 
ground, are equally impregnated with contagious vapours. 
The ditches within the city are many of them stagnant, and 
highly offensive ; and the Dutch have the imprudent custom 
of burying their dead not only witliin the city walls but also 
in the churches. It is not, therefore, in the least surprizing 
that diseases of a fatal nature should prevail in such a 
country. The most common of these are dysenteries and 
putrid and inflammatory fevers, which in the course of a very 
few days, and sometimes in a few hours, prove fatal ; or they 
terminate in a regular intermittent, which, settling in a 
quotidian or tertian ague, is afterwards witli difficulty got 
rid of. The predisposition of the body for disease is such, 
that very slight wounds are frequently attended with gangrene 
or lock-jaw. Very few survive the age which is considered in 
Europe as the middle point of life. 
The usual way of dividing the year, as in most tropical 
climates, is into the rainy and the dry seasons, the first set- 
ting in about November and continuing through April ; but 
the Dutch, absurdly enough, both in speaking and vvriting, 
give names to the months as having some reference to their 
productions, or other circumstances which distinguish them, in 
