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It is very dificult to judge of the size of the town; the size of the houses, in general large, and the breadth of the streets increasd by their canals, makes 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 near so large as it seems to be when you walk about it. Valentyne, 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 12 Arrack houses; this number however appeard to me to be very highly exagerated, those within the walls especialy, but of all this I confess myself a very indifferent judge, having enjoyd so little health especialy towards the latter part of my stay that I had no proper oportunities of satisfying myself in such like particulars.
The streets are broad and hansome
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 428, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-354.html