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a kind of houses which mount about 8 Guns apeice, and seem to me to be the best defences against Indians I have ever seen; these are generaly plac’d in such situations as will command the navigation of three or four Canals, and at the same time as many roads upon their banks. Some there are in the very town, and one of them it was which in the time of the Chinese rebellion (as the Duch call it) quickly leveld all the best Chinese houses to the ground; indeed I was told that the natives are more afraid of these than any other kind of Defences. Of them are many in all parts of Java and the other Islands in the posession of the Duch; I lamented much not being able to get a drawing and plan of one, which indeed had I been well I might easily have done, as I suppose they never could be jealous of a defence which one gun would destroy in half an hour.
If the Dutch fortifications should be even quite as weak and difenceless as I [imagine,]
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from State Library of NSW Transcription of Banks's Journal page (vol. 2) 436, February 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/-banks_remarks-362.html