ndian Archipelago."
In 1824, Marchal's book was published at Brussels, but proved a mere
compilation from those above named. And since then, several works upon
the same subject, some possessing merit, have been produced in Holland
and Germany, out of which countries they are little known. At the
present day, a periodical, appropriated to the affairs of the Dutch East
Indies, appears regularly at Amsterdam. But Englishmen take little
interest in Dutch colonies and colonists; and although now and then some
Eastern traveller has devoted to them a casual chapter, for a quarter of
a century nothing worth the naming has been written in our language with
reference to the island of Java.

Most men have a pet country which, above all others, they desire to
visit. Some long to roam amidst the classic relics of Italian grandeur,
or to explore the immortal sites and renowned battle-fields of Greece;
some set their affections upon Spain, and languish after Andalusia and
the Alhambra; whilst others, to whose imagination the hardy North
appeals more strongly than the soft and enervating South, meditate on
Scandinavia, thirst after the Maelstrom, and dream of Thor and Odin, of
glaciers and elk-hunts. We have a friend for whom the West Indies had a
peculiar and irresistible fascination, to which neither length of voyage
nor dread of Yellow Jack prevented his yielding; we have another--who
has never yet lost sight of Britain's cliffs--whose first period of
absence from his native land is to be devoted to a pleasure trip to
Hindostan. Such fancies and predilections may often be traced to early
reading and association, but not unfrequently they are capricious and
unaccountable, and we shall not investigate why the Eastern Archipelago,
of all the regions he had read and heard of, had the greatest
attractions for Dr. Edward Selberg, a young German physician of much
intelligence but little fortune, strongly imbued with a love of
adventure and the picturesque, and with a desire to increase his stores
of medical and scientific knowledge. The motives of his preference he
himself is puzzled to explain. Many difficulties opposed themselves to
the realisation of his darling project--a visit to the Sunda Islands.
His means were inadequate to the cost of so expensive an expedition; and
although the advantage of science was one of his objects, he had no hope
that his expenses would be defrayed by the government of his own or of
any other country. At l