Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/463

1770 The laws and customs regarding the punishment of slaves are these. A master may punish his slaves as far as he thinks proper by stripes, but should death be the consequence, he is called to a very severe account; if the fact is proved, very rarely escaping with life. There is, however, an officer in every quarter of the town called marineu, who is a kind of constable. He attends to quell all riots, takes up all people guilty of crimes, etc., but is more particularly utilised for apprehending runaway slaves, and punishing them for that or any other crime for which their master thinks they deserve a greater punishment than he chooses to inflict. These punishments are inflicted by slaves bred up to the business: on men they are inflicted before the door of their master's house: on women, for decency's sake, within it. The punishment is stripes, in number according to custom and the nature of the crime, with rods made of split rattans, which fetch blood at every stroke. Consequently they may be, and sometimes are, very severe. A common punishment costs the master of the slave a rix-dollar (4s.), and a severe one about a ducatoon (6s. 8d.) For their encouragement, however, and to prevent them from stealing, the master of every slave is obliged to give him three dubblecheys (7½d.) a week.

Extraordinary as it may seem, there are very few Javans, that is descendants of the original inhabitants of Java, who live in the neighbourhood of Batavia, but there are as many sorts of Indians as there are countries the Dutch import slaves from; either slaves made free or descendants of such. They are all called by the name of oran slam, or Isalam, a name by which they distinguish themselves from all other religions, the term signifying believers of the true faith. They are again subdivided into innumerable divisions, the people from each country keeping themselves in some degree distinct from the rest. The dispositions generally observed in the slaves are, however, visible in the freemen, who completely inherit the different vices or virtues of their respective countries.

Many of these employ themselves in cultivating gardens,