342 MANNER or LIFE OF THE EUROPEANS IN BANKA. 
they form the reservoirs of the water and prevent the drying up of the 
ground. It should only be cleared where it becomes injurious to health by 
swamps and morasses. Many a vast heath now covered by fern and wild 
bushes, might be cultivated and used for pasturage. By this means the 
natives might be released from their hard service as coolies, the roads be¬ 
come practicable for carriages, and the transport of goods, now carried 
by men, might be done by draught cattle. It is true it would be necessa¬ 
ry to level the roads, and to provide them with substantial bridges, but the 
Bankanese, now employed as a beast of burden, would be enabled to spend 
his time in cultivating the ground ; commerce and intercourse would gain 
by it, and a profit ten fold higher than that from the monopoly of the tin, 
would be obtained for the mother country by the developement of com¬ 
merce and traffic. What may become of such countries by careful culti¬ 
vation may be seen in the instance of Java, which alone at present, by the 
produce of the most valuable articles, yields more profit to the mother coun¬ 
try than all her other colonies. 
MANNER OF LIFE OF THE EUROPEANS IN BANKA, 
It may prove interesting to many of my readers to have a sketch of the life 
the Europeans lead in this island, for which reason I shall give an account 
of the life I pursued myself during a three years stayatBanka in the capacity 
of civil and military officer. 
At Batavia I received very unsatisfactory accounts of this land. It was 
generally described as an unhealthy place. A great number of persons con¬ 
founded it with the penal settlement Banda Cin the Moluccas) and deemed 
the fate of the Europeans destined for that place as deplorable as the French 
do that of those who are sent in exile to Cayenne. The most inconsistent 
rumours were spread through Batavia respecting Banka. Some maintained 
that the water there was impregnated with tin particles so much as to tin 
. over, as it were, the bowels of the living, and to form concretions from 
which the unfortunate wretches invariably perished. Others painted the 
country as low, swampy and burned by the beams of the sun, where one 
could not stay long without contracting jaundice, spleens, or at least fever. 
No viands were to be found, not even a cocoanut. Our notions of Banka 
therefore were not the most favourable, and our astonishment was un¬ 
bounded at the sight of an evergreen country with the most luxuriant vege¬ 
tation, and ornamented with hills, instead of a barren, melancholy and 
parched spot. My travelling companion shared in the amazement on hear¬ 
ing, after my return from Paukal-pinang, where I had landed first my 
