Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/436

378 streets increased by their canals, make it impossible to compare it with any English town. All I can say is that when seen from the top of a building, from whence the eye takes it in at one view, it does not look nearly so large as it seems to be when you walk about it. Valentijn, who wrote about and before the year 1726, says that in his time there were within the walls 1242 Dutch houses, and 1200 Chinese; without, 1066 Dutch and 1240 Chinese, besides twelve arrack houses. This number, however, appeared to me to be very highly exaggerated, those within the walls especially. But of all this I confess myself a very indifferent judge, having enjoyed so little health, especially towards the latter part of my stay, that I had no proper opportunity of satisfying myself in such particulars.

The streets are broad and handsome, and the banks of the canals in general planted with rows of trees. A stranger on his first arrival is very much struck with these, and often led to observe how much the heat of the climate must be tempered by the shade of the trees and coolness of the water. Indeed, as to the first, it must be convenient to those who walk on foot; but a very short residence will show him that the inconveniences of the canals far over-balance any convenience he can derive from them in any but a mercantile light. Instead of cooling the air, they contribute not a little to heat it, especially those which are stagnant, as most of them are, by reflecting back the fierce rays of the sun. In the dry season these stink most abominably, and in the wet many of them overflow their banks, filling the lower storeys of the houses near them with water. When they clean them, which is very often, as some are not more than three or four feet deep, the black mud taken out is suffered to lie upon the banks, that is, in the middle of the street, till it has acquired a sufficient hardness to be conveniently laden into boats. This mud stinks intolerably. Add to this that the running water, which is in some measure free from the former inconveniences, has every now and then a dead horse or hog stranded in the shallow parts, a nuisance which I was informed no particular person was appointed to remove. I