421 ON CORAL REEFS AS A CAUSE OF FEVER, 
These two islands of Onrust and Edam are not the only 
islands so affected with fever, for Mr Riley further mentions, 
‘‘that a’l the islands are considered unhealthy, with some 
little allowance in favour of Edam and perhaps Leyden to 
the eastward and Amsterdam and Middleburgh to the west¬ 
ward ; on one of the latter the Hutch Government proposed 
making a dock The latter two islands are generally consi¬ 
dered healthier than any of the rest. Edam is most likely 
healthy from its being so far out, say 10 miles or more. 
Formerly the Hutch had a Hospital on the island of Par- 
merent on account of its convenient proximity to Onrust, and 
a station for convicts at Edam, both of which have been 
given up on account of their unhealthiness; the Hospital 
having been removed to Weltevredeu and the convicts to 
constructing various public works to the eastward. Boats 
crews going on shore to cut wood or for any other purpose 
are liable to be attacked with fever, though not so liable as on 
the islands nearer Batavia, but. still very liable, on the autho¬ 
rity of many captains of coasting vessels” 1 need not multiply 
authorities to show that the islands, within a circuit of 10 
miles of Batavia, are eminently unhealthy, being afflicted with 
an endemic fever of great virulence, that oo asionally, once 
in two or three years, breaks into an epidemic. The same 
fever is also met within the town of Batavia and in the 
appendix to Sir Stamford Raffles’s History of Java we find 
this fever thus alluded to. “ History attests that this city 
has been highly pernicious to the health of both Europeans 
and natives almost from its foundation, and recent experience 
concurs with the testimony of history. The mines of America 
when they were first discovered did not more strongly allure 
the Spaniards, nor urged them to sacrifice more relentlessly 
the lives of the unresisting natives to their burning thirst of 
gold than the monopoly of Java and the spice islands led the 
Hutch company in the tract of wealth through danger, injus¬ 
tice and oppression.” Though the unhealthiness of Batavia 
was at all times known and dreaded, there were times when 
the mortality became so extraordinary and alarming, that 
“ an inquiry was instituted into the extent of this epidemic 
fever which commenced in 1733 and lasted till 1738 and 
during its continuance two thousand of the company’s servants 
and free Christians annually died. In 1739 its violence 
abated, but it broke out again in 1744 and continued with 
little diminution or variation to the date of the report in 
1753. This lever of the town of Batavia presents exactly 
the same type as the fever endemic on the islands which attacks 
the shipping, and has been exactly described in a note to this 
