Travels in the East Indian archipelago

by Albert S. Bickmore

The next evening we came to the Batavia road, a shallow bay where ships lie at anchor partially sheltered from the sea by the many islands scattered about its entrance. The shores of this bay form a low, muddy morass, but high mountains appear in the distance. Through this morass a canal has been cut. Its sides are well walled in, and extend out some distance toward the shipping, on account of the shallowness of the water along the shore. At the end of one of these moles, or walls, stands a small white light-house, indicating the way of approaching the city, which cannot be fully seen from the anchorage.

When a ship arrives from a foreign port, no one can leave her before she is boarded by an officer from the guardship, a list of her passengers and crew obtained, and it is ascertained that there is no sickness on board. Having observed this regulation, we rowed up the canal to the “boom” or tree, where an officer of the customs looks into every boat that passes. This word “boom” came into use, as an officer informed me, when it was the custom to let a tree fall across the canal at night, in order to prevent any boat from landing or going out to the shipping.

Here were crowds of Malay boatmen, engaged in gambling, by pitching coins. This seemed also the headquarters of poultry-venders, who were carrying round living fowls, ducks, and geese, whose feet had been tied together and fastened to a stick, so that they had to hang with their heads downward—the very ideal of cruelty.

Before we could land, we were asked several times in Dutch, French, and English, to take a carriage, for cabmen seem to have the same persistent habits in every corner of the earth. Meanwhile the Malay drivers kept shouting out, “Crétur tuan! crétur tuan!” So we took a “crétur,” that is, a low, covered, four-wheeled carriage, drawn by two miniature ponies. The driver sits up on a seat in front, in a neat baju or jacket of red or scarlet calico, and an enormous hemispherical hat, so gilded or bronzed as to dazzle your eyes when the sun shines.

Though these ponies are small, they go at a quick canter, and we were rapidly whirled along between a row of shade-trees to the city gate, almost the only part of the old walls of the city that is now standing. The other parts were torn down by Marshal Daendals, to allow a freer circulation of air. Then we passed through another row of shade-trees, and over a bridge, to the office of the American consul, a graduate of Harvard; and, as Cambridge had been my home for four years, we at once considered ourselves as old friends.

Before I left America, Senator Sumner, as chairman of our Committee on Foreign Relations, kindly gave me a note of warm commendation to the representatives of foreign powers; and Mr. J. G. S. van Breda, the secretary of the Society of Sciences in Holland, with whom I had been in correspondence while at the Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, gave me a kind note to Baron Sloet van de Beele, the governor-general of the Netherlands India. I immediately addressed a note to His Excellency, enclosing these credentials, and explaining my plan to visit the Spice Islands for the purpose of collecting the shells figured in Rumphius’s “Rariteit Kamer,” and expressing the hope that he would do what he could to aid me in my humble attempts to develop more fully the natural history of that interesting region. These papers our consul kindly forwarded, adding a note endorsing them himself.

As the governor-general administers both the civil and military departments of all the Dutch possessions in the East, I could not expect an immediate reply. I therefore found a quiet place in a Dutch family, with two other boarders who spoke English and could assist me in learning their difficult language, and, bidding Captain Freeman and the other good officers of the Memnon farewell, took up my abode on shore.

Batavia at present is more properly the name of a district or “residency,” than of a city. Formerly it was compact and enclosed by walls, but these were destroyed by Marshal Daendals, in 1811. The foreigners then moved out and built their residences at various places in the vicinity, and these localities still retain their old Malay names. In this part of the city there are several fine hotels, a large opera-house, and a club-house. There are two scientific societies, which publish many valuable papers on the natural history, antiquities, geography, and geology, of all parts of the Netherlands India. These societies have valuable collections in Batavia, and at Buitenzorg there is a large collection of minerals and geological specimens. The “King’s Plain” is a very large open square, surrounded by rows of shade-trees and the residences of the wealthier merchants. Near this is the “Waterloo Plain.” On one of its sides is the largest building in Batavia, containing the offices of the various government bureaus, and the “throne-room,” where the governor-general receives, in the name of the king, congratulations from the higher officials in that vicinity.

The governor-general has a palace near by, but he resides most of the time at Buitenzorg, forty miles in the interior, where the land rises to about a thousand feet above the level of the sea, and the climate is much more temperate.