He looked upon me completely in the
light of a pupil, in whose advancement he had the deepest interest.
"Never mind how old you are," he used to say; "you will outlive me yet
by many a year, and will have plenty of use for all the information you
can pick up before you die." I little thought at the time how true his
words would prove. He used in joke to call me hardy Old Jack; and
certainly for many years I never had had an hour's illness. The truth
is, that I was gifted with a sound constitution, and had avoided playing
tricks with it, as a great number of people do, and then complain of the
sicknesses with which they are afflicted, shutting their eyes to the
fact that they have brought them on themselves entirely in consequence
of their own folly.

While we lay at Batavia, I was constantly on shore with Newman. The
Roads of Batavia are rather more than a quarter of a league from the
city, and are guarded from the prevailing winds by a dozen small islands
outside them. The ground on which the city stands bears evident signs
of having been thrown up by the sea, but rises gradually to the
mountains ten leagues off behind it. The River Jacatra runs through the
city, and it is intersected likewise in all directions by canals. It
has also a moat running round it, as likewise a wall of coral-rock. Its
defences consist of twenty bastions, and a castle near the sea, with a
mud-bank in front of it. It is, indeed, completely a Dutch city. But
besides its numberless canals and ditches, as it is situated in a dead
marshy flat, and is surrounded with dirty fens, bogs, and morasses, over
which a tropical sun sends down its burning rays, drawing up noxious
vapours of every description, it may be considered, taken all in all, as
one of the most unhealthy cities of the civilised world. By care and
proper drainage these defects might be amended, and, as the general
temperature of the atmosphere is not excessive, it might become as
healthy as any other place in those regions.

Java is about two hundred miles long and forty broad, and has numerous
deep inlets along the northern coast, where ships may anchor during the
good or south-east monsoon. A chain of mountains, from which a number
of rivers descend to the sea, runs down the centre, and divides the
island into two parts. The air is cooled by the sea-breezes, which, as
in the West Indies, set in every day. The soil is particularly rich.
It is cultivated by buffaloes,