The town in general is supplied from a considerable distance, where great quantities of land are cultivated merely for the production of fruit.  The country people, to whom these lands belong, meet the people of the town at two great markets; one on Monday, called Passar Sineeu, and the other on Saturday, called Passar Tanabank.  These fairs are held at places considerably distant from each other, for the convenience of different districts; neither of them, however, are more than five miles distant from Batavia.  At these fairs, the best fruit may be bought at the cheapest rate, and the sight of them to a European is very entertaining.  The quantity of fruit is astonishing; forty or fifty cart-loads of the finest pine-apples, packed as carelessly as turnips in England, are common, and other fruit in the same profusion.  The days, however, on which these markets are held are ill contrived; the time between Saturday and Monday is too short, and that between Monday and Saturday too long:  Great part of what is bought on Monday is always much the worse for keeping before a new stock can be bought, either by the retailer or consumer; so that for several days in every week there is no good fruit in the hands of any people but the Chinese in Passar Pissang.

The inhabitants of this part of India practise a luxury which seems to be but little attended to in other countries; they are continually burning aromatic woods and resins, and scatter odours round them in a profusion of flowers, possibly as an antidote to the noisome effluvia of their ditches and canals.  Of sweet-smelling flowers they have a great variety, altogether unknown in Europe, the chief of which I shall briefly describe.

1.  The Champacka, or Michelia Champacca.  This grows upon a tree as large as an apple-tree, and consists of fifteen long narrow petala, which give it the appearance of being double, though in reality it is not so:  Its colour is yellow, and much deeper than that of a jonquil, to which it has some resemblance in smell.

2.  The Cananga, or Uvaria Cananga, is a green flower, not at all resembling the blossom of any tree or plant in Europe:  It has indeed more the appearance of a bunch of leaves than a flower; its scent is agreeable, but altogether peculiar to itself.

3.  The Mulatti, or Nyctanthes Sambac.  This is well known in English hot-houses by the name of Arabian jessamine:  It grows here in the greatest profusion, and its fragrance, like that of all other Indian flowers, though exquisitely pleasing, has not that overpowering strength which distinguishes some of the same sorts in Europe.

4, 5.  The Combang Caracnassi, and Combang Tonquin, Percularia Glabro.  These are small flowers, of the dog’s-bane kind, very much resembling each other in shape and smell, highly fragrant, but very different from every product of an English garden.

6.  The Bonga Tanjong, or Mimusops Elengi of Linnaeus.  This flower is shaped like a star of seven or eight rays, and is about half an inch in diameter:  It is of a yellowish colour, and has an agreeable smell.