n
obtained, their impaired health renders it difficult for them to enjoy.
Another class of the colonists consists of men who, having committed
crimes in their own country, have fled from the vengeance of the law.
These are thought little the worse of in Java, where the transition from
one quarter of the globe to the other seems admitted as a species of
moral whitewashing. And indeed, bad characters so abound amongst the
scanty European population, that if the respectable portion kept
themselves aloof, they would probably be found the minority. Many of the
reprobates have realised considerable property. The rich host of the
principal hotel at Surabaya, is a branded galley-slave. Dr. Selberg
often found himself in the society of hard drinkers, and these, when
wine had loosened their tongues, would let out details of their past
lives, which at first greatly shocked his simplicity. "I was once," he
says, "invited to a dinner, which ended, as usual, with a drinking bout.
My neighbour at the table, was a German from the Rhine provinces, who
had been twelve years in Java. He got very drunk, and spoke of his
beloved country, which he should never see again. He was a man of
property, well looked upon in the island, and I asked him what had first
induced him to settle there. He replied very quietly, that it was on
account of a theft he had committed. I started from my chair as if an
adder had bitten me, and begged the master of the house to let me sit
elsewhere than beside that man. He complied with my request, at the same
time remarking, with a smile, that I should hear similar things of many,
but that they were Europeans, and jolly fellows, and their conduct had
been blameless since their residence in Java." In such a state of
society, the best plan was to abstain from inquiries and intimacies. So
the doctor found, and after a while, was able to eat the excellent Javan
dinners, and sip his Medoc and Hochheimer, without asking or caring
whether his fellow-feeders would not have been more in their places in
an Amsterdam Zuchthaus, than in an honest man's company.

Dr. Selberg was at Batavia during the wet season, when torrents of rain,
of whose abundance and volume Europeans can form no idea, alternate with
a sun-heat that cracks the earth and pumps up pestilence from the low
marshy ground upon which this fever-nest is built. He had abundant
opportunity to investigate the causes and symptoms of the fevers and
other prevalent mala