the capital of a kingdom of the same name in the island of Java, is, in the *Encyclopædia*, said to BANTAM to be a large town with a good harbour and fortified castle. Sir George Staunton, however, who visited Bantam since that article was published, gives a very different account both of the town and of its harbour. Once indeed it was a place of considerable consequence, being the great mart for pepper and other spices, whence they were distributed to the rest of the world. The chief factory of the English as well as Dutch East India Company was settled there. The merchants of Arabia and Hindostan resorted to it. Its sovereigns were so desirous of encouraging trade, by giving security to foreign merchants against the violent and revengeful disposition of the natives, that the crime of murder was never pardoned when committed against a stranger, but might be commuted by a foreigner for a fine to the relations of the deceased. This place flourished for a considerable time; but the Dutch having conquered the neighbouring province of Jacatra, where they since have built Batavia, and transferred their principal business to it, and the English having removed to Hindostan and China, and trade in other respects having taken a new course, Bantam was reduced to a poor remnant of its former opulence and importance. Other circumstances have accelerated its decline. The bay is so choked up with daily accretions of new earth washed down from the mountains, as well as by coral shoals extending a considerable way to the eastward, that it is inaccessible at present to vessels of burden; even the party who went there from the Lion, the ship which carried Lord Macartney to China, was obliged to remove from her pinnace into a canoe, in order to reach the town. With the trade of Bantam the power of its sovereign declined. In his wars with other princes of Java he called in the assistance of the Dutch; and from that period he became in fact their captive. He resides in a palace, built in the European style, with a fort garnished by a detachment from Batavia, of which the commander takes his orders not from the king of Bantam, but from a Dutch chief or governor, who lives in another fort adjoining the town, and nearer to the sea-side. His Bantamele majesty is allowed, however, to maintain a body of native troops, and has several small armed vessels, by means of which he maintains authority over some parts of the south of Sumatra. His subjects are obliged to sell to him all the pepper they raise in either island, at a low price, which he is under contract with the Dutch to deliver to them at a small advance, and much under the marketable value of that commodity. The present king joins the spiritual to the temporal power, and is high priest of the religion of Mahomet; with which he mingles, indeed, some of the rites and superstitions of the aboriginal inhabitants of Java; adoring, for instance, the great banyan, or Indian fig-tree, which is likewise held sacred in Hindostan, and under which religious rites might be conveniently performed; in like manner, as all affairs of state are actually transacted by the Bantamele under some shadowing tree by moonlight. To complete the ruin of Bantam, a fire some time ago destroyed most of the houses, and few have been since rebuilt.