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BAT A VI A, 221 
No sooner had the work of destruction ended than that of 
plunder began. The soldiers and sailors were seen scrambling 
among the dead bodies, their hats and pockets loaded with 
dollars, quarrelling for the spoil, fighting, maiming, and 
murdering one another. This extraordinary affair took place 
on the 9th of October ; the whole of the 10th was a day of 
plunder; and on the 11th they began to remove out of the 
streets the dead bodies, the interment of which employed them 
eight days. The number said to have perished, according 
to the Dutch account, amounts to more than twelve thousand 
souls. Having thus completed one of the most inhuman and 
*■ apparently causeless transactions that ever disgraced a 
civilized people, they had the audacity to proclaim a public 
thanksgivdng to the God of mercy for their happy deliverance 
from the hands of the heathen. 
While the Dutch, in their public records, endeavour to ^ 
justify this atrocious act on the plea of necessity, they make 
the following memorable observation : " It is remarkable that 
" this people, notwithstanding their great numbers, offered 
" not the least resistance, but suffered themselves to be led 
" as sheep to the slaughter.'" For my own part,, when I re- 
flect on the timid character of the Chinese, their want of 
confidence in each other, and their strong aversion to the 
shedding of human blood ; and when I compare their situa- 
tion in Batavia with that of the Hottentots in the colony of 
the Cape of Good Hope, where every httle irregularity is 
magnified into a plot against the government, I cannot for- 
bear giving a decided opinion that these people were in- 
nocently murdered. The consequences to the Dutch proved 
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