Page:Life in Java Volume 1.djvu/118

100 Capt. H next took me to the Fort, which is situated in the town, and surrounded by a fosse, well supplied with water from the river Kedirie. The walls are of considerable thickness, and, like all the Dutch forts I have seen out here, washed over with a kind of slate colour. The European soldiers occupy the upper rooms, and their native brethren those below, a small detached building serving for recruits before they are drafted into their respective regiments. There are several subterranean passages beneath the Fort; one conducting to some quarter beyond the town, and others to different adjacent redoubts or mounds, thrown up a short distance from Surabaya, during the time, I believe, of Governor-General Janssens.

The small Fort, which originally stood on the site of the present one, fell, during the occupation of Java by the French, into the hands of the English under Gillespie.