Within this castle are apartments for the Governor General, and all the Council of India, to which they are enjoined to repair in case of a siege. Here are also large storehouses, where great quantities of the Company’s goods are kept, especially those that are brought from Europe, and where almost all their writers transact their business. In this place also are laid up a great number of cannon, whether to mount upon the walls or furnish shipping, we could not learn; and the Company is said to be well supplied with powder, which is dispersed in various magazines, that if some should be destroyed by lightning, which in this place is very frequent, the rest may escape.

Besides the fortifications of the town, numerous forts are dispersed about the country to the distance of twenty or thirty miles; these seem to have been intended merely to keep the natives in awe, and indeed they are fit for nothing else. For the same purpose a kind of houses, each of which mounts about eight guns, are placed in such situations as command the navigation of three or four canals, and consequently the roads upon their banks: some of these are in the town itself, and it was from one of these that all the best houses belonging to the Chinese were levelled with the ground in the Chinese rebellion of 1740. These defences are scattered over all parts of Java, and the other islands of which the Dutch have got possession in these seas. Of one of these singular forts, or fortified houses, we should have procured a drawing, if our Gentlemen had not been confined by sickness almost all the time they were upon the island.

Voyaging Accounts