. Java and her neighbours; a traveller's notes in Java Celebes, the Moluccas and Sumatra . ed a sum oftwenty dollars was paid for the exercise of theprivilege. The number of escutcheons is underthe circumstances small, and we cannot butwonder whether this is to be taken as evidenceof lack of vanity or lack of funds on the part ofthe church members. A few yards up Jacatra Road, to the left of thechurch, ones attention is drawn to a section ofold wall, surmounted by a whitewashed humanskull transfixed by a spear point. The groundbehind is wild and uncared-for, with traces hereand there of former
. Java and her neighbours; a traveller's notes in Java Celebes, the Moluccas and Sumatra . ed a sum oftwenty dollars was paid for the exercise of theprivilege. The number of escutcheons is underthe circumstances small, and we cannot butwonder whether this is to be taken as evidenceof lack of vanity or lack of funds on the part ofthe church members. A few yards up Jacatra Road, to the left of thechurch, ones attention is drawn to a section ofold wall, surmounted by a whitewashed humanskull transfixed by a spear point. The groundbehind is wild and uncared-for, with traces hereand there of former buildings. A tablet belowthe skull bears an explanatory inscription inDutch and Javanese stating that in detestedmemory of the traitor Pieter Erberveld buildingor planting in this place is forbidden for all was a popular half-caste leader who,through the faithlessness of a native girl, wasbetrayed in a plot which had in view the massacreof all the Dutch in Batavia and the proclamationof Erberveld as king. His offence was a grievous •> 41 <r*yi. •J new r-!«#». Photo by the AuthorTHE ERBERVELD SKULL AND INSCRIPTION OLD BATAVIA 63 one, but its punishment seems in these moreenlightened days of the twentieth century to havebeen unnecessarily cruel, unless we reahze thatthe imperative need in earlier days of protectingthe lives and property of the little body of whitecolonists against the attack of overwhelminghordes of natives could only be met by the employ-ment, in such cases as that of Erberveld, of puni-tive methods calculated by their horrors to actas powerful and terrifying deterrents on a peopleunafraid of imprisonment or ordinary was in 1722 broken on the wheel, hishead and hands cut off, and his body was the head now on the wall. Its presentsize is due to repeated coats of whitewash. Besides these few public remains of the earlydays, the town hall, gate, cannon, church, andskull,—a meagre array for a town of such a
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