Page:Life in Java Volume 1.djvu/55

The father of Peter Elberfeld—I subsequently learnt from a friend, who recounted to me all he knew of that individual's history—was a native of Westphalia, "the land of hams," who had come to Java for the purpose of making his fortune, and who, on arriving in the island, had set up in business as a merchant. After some time he formed a connection with a native woman, by whom he had six sons, the five elder of whom followed the manners and European habits of their father; but Peter, the youngest, born in the year 1663, with strange pertinacity, from childhood clung to native ideas and customs, which subsequently led him to become an enthusiastic and daring patriot. Hating the Dutch, and all connected with them, looking upon everything done by them as an injury to those whom he regarded as his own people, he resolved on the extermination of every foreigner from the soil of Java, and directed all his thoughts to the consideration of the time when, and the