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The Pangeran now feigned friendship, and having enticed Broeck to a conference, made him prisoner and attacked the Dutch stronghold. The garrison however held out until the governor-general returned with a strong force. With this he stormed and destroyed the town of Jacatra and on its site erected a new town, as the seat of the company's government, to which the name Batavia was given.
We were witnesses of a curious spectacle one day, when the Chinese assembled from far and near to visit the tombs of their ancestors at Jacatra, near the site of the capital of that ancient kingdom. The road from Batavia to Jacatra is a very fine one.
"Were they masters," he wrote home, "the Dutch would quickly be out of the Indies, but praise be to the Lord, who has provided otherwise. They are an unendurable nation." With this object he strongly fortified the factory near Jacatra, thereby arousing the hostility of the Pangeran, as the native ruler was styled.
Both the upper and lower towns are traversed by the Jacatra sometimes called the Tjiliwoeng from which branch canals that spread through the city in all directions, thereby emphasizing its distinctly Dutch atmosphere. The streets are for the most part straight and regular, being paved, as in the mother-country, with cobblestones.
"Then you may do a great service to me and to another. Go to Jacatra in Batavia, and ask for Pieter Erberveld. Hendrik van der Have tells him to cease before it is too late, before the thing becomes accursed. Tell him this. You will have done well, and I shall sleep again. Give him the message " The voice did not stop, so much as fade away unfinished.
The East and West India companies, the Greenland company, and others, were successively formed. By the effect of their enterprise, industry and wealth, conquests were made and colonies founded with surprising rapidity. The town of Amsterdam, now New York, was founded in 1624; and the East saw Batavia rise up from the ruins of Jacatra, which was sacked and razed by the Dutch adventurers.
The first governor-general, Pieter Both, had made Java the centre of administration and had established factories and posts at Bantam, Jacatra and Djapara, not without arousing considerable hostility among the local rulers, jealous of the presence of the intruders.
The River Jacatra runs through the city, and it is intersected likewise in all directions by canals. It has also a moat running round it, as likewise a wall of coral-rock. Its defences consist of twenty bastions, and a castle near the sea, with a mud-bank in front of it. It is, indeed, completely a Dutch city.
This hostility was fostered and encouraged by the English, whose vessels had also visited Java and had erected a trading-post close to that of the Dutch at Jacatra. Already the spice islands had been the scene of hostile encounters between the representatives of the two nations, and had led to many altercations. This was the state of things when Jan Pieterzoon Koen became governor-general in 1615.
In 1620, Batavia was built on the ruins of the old city of Jacatra; but the seat of government was not immediately removed from Amboyna. In 1622, that part of New Holland which is called Lewin's Land was first found; and in 1627, Peter Nuyts discovered between New Holland and New Guinea a country which bears his name.
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