SIR THOMAS STAMFORD RAFFLES. 67 
tend this sketch far heyond its due limits ; nor is it 
necessary to our purpose. We shall therefore con- 
fine om- ohservations to such parts of the -work as 
are connected with the physical, rather than with 
the civil or political history of the coimtry. 
Of Java, little is knoivn until the establishment 
of Mohammedanism about the end of the 13th 
century of the Javan era (1475), when, according 
to the native annalists, Mulana Ibrahim, a cele- 
brated Pandita from Arabia, learning that the 
inhabitants of that large and populous island were 
heathens, resolved to imdertake an expedition for 
their conversion to the faith of the Prophet. In 
course of time the Moslem creed prevailed, after a 
iong and bloody war. About two hundred years 
later, Java was first visited by the English and 
Dutch ; the latter, as is well known, succeeded in 
establishing their power at Bantam (1595), avail- 
ing themselves of the divisions and convulsions by 
which the country had been previously distracted. 
Passing over the long train of military and mer- 
cantile transactions which followed, we need only 
mention that by the final settlement of 1 758, at the 
end of twelve years’ war, in which the finest pro- 
vinces of the island were laid waste, thousands slain 
on both sides, and the independence of the ancient 
empire totally annihilated, the Dutch divided the 
government between themselves and the native 
princes, to whom the inland and southern districts 
