Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 2.djvu/384

 54fO SEQUEL OF JAVANESE HISTORY. the moment anxious to be possessed of the country of the spices. They seem never to have attempted any conquest in Java, and to have confined them- selves solely to the aflPairs of commerce, which they conducted chiefly at Bantam and Panarukan. In the native annals, no notice whatever is taken of them. The Dutch arrived in Java in the year 1595, eighty-four years after the Portuguese, and 1 17 after the establishment of the Mahomedan religion. This was during the last years of the reign of the first prince of the house of Mataram, the Fanam' bahan Se?iopati, Cheribon, Bantam, and Jacatra, were then independent, and Madura, Surabaya, and the maritime provinces east of it, were still un- subdued. It was during the four and twenty years which elapsed from their arrival, until the founda- tion of Batavia, that the family of Mataram was chiefly aggrandized by the conquest of the best part of the island 5 but the probability is, that a number of years must have passed, before the igno- rant and gross traders of the sixteenth century under- stood and noted the political movements of a great country, especially as the residence of the more in- telligent portion of them was always momentary and uncertain. The object of the European adventurers of those times was purely mercenary and commercial. The plunder of the east, for it does not deserve the