272 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[March, 
death " by being stretched on a cross, — the flesh of their legs, 
arms, and breast torn away with redhot pincers, — their bellies 
ripp6d up, and their hearts thrown in their faces, — their heads cut 
off, and stuck upon poles ; and their mangled carcasses exposed 
to be devoured by the fowls of the air, &c. &c. And after this- 
sentence was put in execution, a solemn thanksgiving was pro- 
claimed ; and the following day thirty more were broken on the 
wheel." 
In seventeen hundred and forty, as we find by a reference to 
the same author, the Governor of Batavia, Valkanier, was guilty 
of a still greater outrage, in order to get rid of a redundance of 
population, which had begun to create suspicion and alarm. Dis- 
appointed in not being able to extort a large sum of money from 
the Chinese chiefs for permission to celebrate some particular 
feast, the governor accused them of a treasonable plot against his 
authority and life. The Chinese chief, whom he chose to desig- 
nate as the leader of the conspiracy, was dragged to the stadt- 
house, where the most horrid torture was employed for the pur- 
pose of extorting from him the confession of a crime which he 
never thought of ; and at the same time five hundred of his coun- 
trymen were cast into prison, where they were most inhumanly 
butchered. About four hundred who fled to the hospital, a build- 
ing of their own construction, shared the same fate. An indis- 
criminate slaughter of the Chinese was' at the same time going on 
in the streets, which literally ran with blood. Escape was im- 
possible, as the gates were doubly guarded, and all the sailors had 
been landed from the ships in the road, to assist in this horrid 
tragedy ; in which neither age nor sex was spared. The timid 
Chinese made no resistance, but, according to the Dutch account, 
in their public records, " sufi"ered themselves to be led as sheep to 
the slaughter." The number stated to have perished is com- 
puted in the same records to be twelve thousand souls ! A day 
was immediately set apart by the governor as a piiblic thanks- 
giving to the God of mercy, for their happy deliverance from the 
hands of the heathen ! 
In seventeen hundred and ninety-two, the English embassy to 
Cochin China stopped at Batavia for several days. Mr. Barrow 
was of the party, and he gives a melancholy account of the broken 
spirit of the Javan chiefs and people, the native lords of the island. 
