222 BAT A VI A. 
much more serious than at first they seemed to have been 
aware of. The terrified Chinese who escaped the massacre fled 
into the interior of the island ; a scarcity of rice and every 
kind of vegetables succeeded ; and the apprehensions of a 
famine induced them to ofier terms to the fugitives, and to 
entreat their return. 
On another occasion of a supposed conspiracy against the 
government, the Dutch acted with a rigour that could 
scarcely be justified on any emergency. The chief, with 
twenty of the conspirators, were condemned to suffer death, 
" by being stretched on a cross ; the flesh of their legs, arms, 
" and breast torn away with red hot pincers ; their bellies 
" ripped up, and their hearts thrown in their faces ; their 
" heads cut off" and stuck upon ' poles, and their mangled 
" carcases exposed to be devouied by the fowls of the 
" air,^' &c. &c. And after this sentence was put in execu- 
tion, a solemn thanksgiving Avas proclaimed ; and the follow- 
ing day thirty more were broken on the wheel. To perpe- 
tuate this conspiracy, a skreen or blank wall is erected, with 
a death's head stuck on the top, on the spot where the house 
of the rebel chief stood ; and on the skreen is written, 
in the Dutch, French, Portugueze, Malay, and Chinese 
languages, the folloAving sentence : " Here once stood the 
" house of the abominable wretch Peter Erberfeldt, where a 
" house shall never again stand to the end of time. Batavia, 
« 22d April 1722.'' 
This last conspirator was a native of Batavia, and nearly con- 
nected with some of the principal families of the Javanese. The 
