The history of Sumatra

by William Marsden

CHAPTER 9.

ARTS AND MANUFACTURES.
ART OF MEDICINE.
SCIENCES.
ARITHMETIC
. GEOGRAPHY.
ASTRONOMY.
MUSIC, ETC.

ARTS AND MANUFACTURES.

I shall now take a view of those arts and manufactures which the Sumatrans are skilled in, and which are not merely domestic but contribute rather to the conveniences, and in some instances to the luxuries, than to the necessaries of life. I must remind the reader that my observations on this subject are mostly drawn from the Rejangs, or those people of the island who are upon their level of improvement. We meet with accounts in old writers of great foundries of cannon in the dominion of Achin, and it is certain that firearms as well as krises are at this day manufactured in the country of Menangkabau; but my present description does not go to these superior exertions of art, which certainly do not appear among those people of the island whose manners, more immediately, I am attempting to delineate.

FILIGREE.

What follows, however, would seem an exception to this limitation; there being no manufacture in that part of the world, and perhaps I might be justified in saying, in any part of the world, that has been more admired and celebrated than the fine gold and silver filigree of Sumatra. This indeed is, strictly speaking, the work of the Malayan inhabitants; but as it is in universal use and wear throughout the country, and as the goldsmiths are settled everywhere along the coast, I cannot be guilty of much irregularity in describing here the process of their art.

MODE OF WORKING IT.

There is no circumstance that renders the filigree a matter of greater curiosity than the coarseness of the tools employed in the workmanship, and which, in the hands of a European, would not be thought sufficiently perfect for the most ordinary purposes. They are rudely and inartificially formed by the goldsmith (pandei) from any old iron he can procure. When you engage one of them to execute a piece of work his first request is usually for a piece of iron hoop to make his wire-drawing instrument; an old hammer head, stuck in a block, serves for an anvil; and I have seen a pair of compasses composed of two old nails tied together at one end. The gold is melted in a piece of a priuk or earthen rice-pot, or sometimes in a crucible of their own making, of common clay. In general they use no bellows but blow the fire with their mouths through a joint of bamboo, and if the quantity of metal to be melted is considerable three or four persons sit round their furnace, which is an old broken kwali or iron pot, and blow together. At Padang alone, where the manufacture is more considerable, they have adopted the Chinese bellows. Their method of drawing the wire differs but little from that used by European workmen. When drawn to a sufficient fineness they flatten it by beating it on their anvil; and when flattened they give it a twist like that in the whalebone handle of a punch-ladle, by rubbing it on a block of wood with a flat stick. After twisting they again beat it on the anvil, and by these means it becomes flat wire with indented edges. With a pair of nippers they fold down the end of the wire, and thus form a leaf or element of a flower in their work, which is cut off. The end is again folded and cut off till they have got a sufficient number of leaves, which are all laid on singly. Patterns of the flowers or foliage, in which there is not very much variety, are prepared on paper, of the size of the gold plate on which the filigree is to be laid. According to this they begin to dispose on the plate the larger compartments of the foliage, for which they use plain flat wire of a larger size, and fill them up with the leaves before mentioned. To fix their work they employ a glutinous substance made of the small red pea with a black spot before mentioned, ground to a pulp on a rough stone. This pulp they place on a young coconut about the size of a walnut, the top and bottom being cut off. I at first imagined that caprice alone might have directed them to the use of the coconut for this purpose; but I have since reflected on the probability of the juice of the young fruit being necessary to keep the pulp moist, which would otherwise speedily become dry and unfit for the work. After the leaves have been all placed in order and stuck on, bit by bit, a solder is prepared of gold filings and borax, moistened with water, which they strew or daub over the plate with a feather, and then putting it in the fire for a short time the whole becomes united. This kind of work on a gold plate they call karrang papan: when the work is open, they call it karrang trus. In executing the latter the foliage is laid out on a card, or soft kind of wood covered with paper, and stuck on, as before described, with the paste of the red seed; and the work, when finished, being strewed over with their solder, is put into the fire, when, the card or soft wood burning away, the gold remains connected. The greatest skill and attention is required in this operation as the work is often made to run by remaining too long or in too hot a fire. If the piece be large they solder it at several times. When the work is finished they give it that fine high colour they so much admire by an operation which they term sapoh. This consists in mixing nitre, common salt, and alum, reduced to powder and moistened, laying the composition on the filigree and keeping it over a moderate fire until it dissolves and becomes yellow. In this situation the piece is kept for a longer or shorter time according to the intensity of colour they wish the gold to receive. It is then thrown into water and cleansed. In the manufacture of baju buttons they first make the lower part flat, and, having a mould formed of a piece of buffalo's horn, indented to several sizes, each like one half of a bullet mould, they lay their work over one of these holes, and with a horn punch they press it into the form of the button. After this they complete the upper part. The manner of making the little balls with which their works are sometimes ornamented is as follows. They take a piece of charcoal, and, having cut it flat and smooth, they make in it a small hole, which they fill with gold dust, and this melted in the fire becomes a little ball. They are very inexpert at finishing and polishing the plain parts, hinges, screws, and the like, being in this as much excelled by the European artists as these fall short of them in the fineness and minuteness of the foliage. The Chinese also make filigree, mostly of silver, which looks elegant, but wants likewise the extraordinary delicacy of the Malayan work. The price of the workmanship depends upon the difficulty or novelty of the pattern. In some articles of usual demand it does not exceed one-third of the value of the gold; but, in matters of fancy, it is generally equal to it. The manufacture is not now (1780) held in very high estimation in England, where costliness is not so much the object of luxury as variety; but, in the revolution of taste, it may probably be again sought after and admired as fashionable.

IRON MANUFACTURES.

But little skill is shown amongst the country people in forging iron. They make nails however, though not much used by them in building, wooden pins being generally substituted; also various kinds of tools, as the prang or bill, the banchi, rembe, billiong, and papatil, which are different species of adzes, the kapak or axe, and the pungkur or hoe. Their fire is made with charcoal; the fossil coal which the country produces being rarely, if ever, employed, except by the Europeans; and not by them of late years, on the complaint of its burning away too quickly: yet the report made of it in 1719 was that it gave a surer heat than the coal from England. The bed of it (described rather as a large rock above ground) lies four days' journey up Bencoolen River, from whence quantities are washed down by the floods. The quality of coal is rarely good near the surface. Their bellows are thus constructed: two bamboos, of about four inches diameter and five feet in length, stand perpendicularly near the fire, open at the upper end and stopped below. About an inch or two from the bottom a small joint of bamboo is inserted into each, which serve as nozzles, pointing to, and meeting at, the fire. To produce a stream of air bunches of feathers or other soft substance, being fastened to long handles, are worked up and down in the upright tubes, like the piston of a pump. These, when pushed downwards, force the air through the small horizontal tubes, and, by raising and sinking each alternately, a continual current or blast is kept up; for which purpose a boy is usually placed on a high seat or stand. I cannot retrain from remarking that the description of the bellows used in Madagascar, as given by Sonnerat, Volume 2 page 60, so entirely corresponds with this that the one might almost pass for a copy of the other.

CARPENTER'S WORK.

The progress they have made in carpenter's work has been already pointed out, where there buildings were described.

TOOLS.

They are ignorant of the use of the saw, excepting where we have introduced it among them. Trees are felled by chopping at the stems, and in procuring boards they are confined to those the direction of whose grain or other qualities admit of their being easily split asunder. In this respect the species called maranti and marakuli have the preference. The tree, being stripped of its branches and its bark, is cut to the length required, and by the help of wedges split into boards. These being of irregular thickness are usually dubbed upon the spot. The tool used for this purpose is the rembe, a kind of adze. Most of their smaller work, and particularly on the bamboo, is performed with the papatil, which resembles in shape as much as in name the patupatu of the New Zealanders, but has the vast superiority of being made of iron. The blade, which is fastened to the handle with a nice and curious kind of rattan-work, is so contrived as to turn in it, and by that means can be employed either as an adze or small hatchet. Their houses are generally built with the assistance of this simple instrument alone. The billiong is no other than a large papatil, with a handle of two or three feet in length, turning, like that, in its socket.

CEMENTS.

The chief cement they employ for small work is the curd of buffalo­milk, called prakat. It is to be observed that butter is made (for the use of Europeans only; the words used by the Malays, for butter and cheese, monteiga and queijo, being pure Portuguese) not as with us, by churning, but by letting the milk stand till the butter forms of itself on the top. It is then taken off with a spoon, stirred about with the same in a flat vessel, and well washed in two or three waters. The thick sour milk left at the bottom, when the butter or cream is removed, is the curd here meant. This must be well squeezed, formed into cakes, and left to dry, when it will grow nearly as hard as flint. For use you must scrape some of it off, mix it with quick lime, and moisten it with milk. I think there is no stronger cement in the world, and it is found to hold, particularly in a hot and damp climate, much better than glue; proving also effectual in mending chinaware. The viscous juice of the saga-pea (abrus) is likewise used in the country as a cement.

INK.

Ink is made by mixing lamp-black with the white of egg. To procure the former they suspend over a burning lamp an earthen pot, the bottom of which is moistened, in order to make the soot adhere to it.

DESIGNING.

Painting and drawing they are quite strangers to. In carving, both in wood and ivory, they are curious and fanciful, but their designs are always grotesque and out of nature. The handles of the krises are the most common subjects of their ingenuity in this art, which usually exhibit the head and beak of a bird, with the folded arms of a human creature, not unlike the representation of one of the Egyptian deities. In cane and basketwork they are particularly neat and expert; as well as in mats, of which some kinds are much prized for their extreme fineness and ornamental borders.

LOOMS.

Silk and cotton cloths, of varied colours, manufactured by themselves, are worn by the natives in all parts of the country; especially by the women. Some of their work is very fine, and the patterns prettily fancied. Their loom or apparatus for weaving (tunun) is extremely defective, and renders their progress tedious. One end of the warp being made fast to a frame, the whole is kept tight, and the web stretched out by means of a species of yoke, which is fastened behind the body, when the person weaving sits down. Every second of the longitudinal threads, or warp, passes separately through a set of reeds, like the teeth of a comb, and the alternate ones through another set. These cross each other, up and down, to admit the woof, not from the extremities, as in our looms, nor effected by the feet, but by turning edgeways two flat sticks which pass between them. The shuttle (turak) is a hollow reed about sixteen inches long, generally ornamented on the outside, and closed at one end, having in it a small bit of stick, on which is rolled the woof or shoot. The silk cloths have usually a gold head. They use sometimes another kind of loom, still more simple than this, being no more than a frame in which the warp is fixed, and the woof darned with a long small-pointed shuttle. For spinning the cotton they make use of a machine very like ours. The women are expert at embroidery, the gold and silver thread for which is procured from China, as well as their needles. For common work their thread is the pulas before mentioned, or else filaments of the pisang (musa).

EARTHENWARE.

Different kinds of earthenware, I have elsewhere observed, are manufactured in the island.

PERFUMES.

They have a practice of perfuming their hair with oil of benzoin, which they distil themselves from the gum by a process doubtless of their own invention. In procuring it a priuk, or earthen rice-pot, covered close, is used for a retort. A small bamboo is inserted in the side of the vessel, and well luted with clay and ashes, from which the oil drops as it comes over. Along with the benzoin they put into the retort a mixture of sugar-cane and other articles that contribute little or nothing to the quantity or quality of the distillation; but no liquid is added. This oil is valued among them at a high price, and can only be used by the superior rank of people.

OIL.

The oil in general use is that of the coconut, which is procured in the following manner. The fleshy part being scraped out of the nut, which for this use must be old, is exposed for some time to the heat of the sun. It is then put into a mat bag and placed in the press (kampahan) between two sloping timbers, which are fixed together in a socket in the lower part of the frame, and forced towards each other by wedges in a groove at top, compressing by this means the pulp of the nut, which yields an oil that falls into a trough made for its reception below. In the farther parts of the country this oil also, owing to the scarcity of coconuts, is dear; and not so much used for burning as that from other vegetables, and the dammar or rosin, which is always at hand.

TORCHES.

When travelling at night they make use of torches or links, called suluh, the common sort of which are nothing more than dried bamboos of a convenient length, beaten at the joints till split in every part, without the addition of any resinous or other inflammable substance. A superior kind is made by filling with dammar a young bamboo, about a cubit long, well dried, and having the outer skin taken off.

These torches are carried with a view, chiefly, to frighten away the tigers, which are alarmed at the appearance of fire; and for the same reason it is common to make a blaze with wood in different parts round their villages. The tigers prove to the inhabitants, both in their journeys and even their domestic occupations, most fatal and destructive enemies. The number of people annually slain by these rapacious tyrants of the woods is almost incredible. I have known instances of whole villages being depopulated by them. Yet, from a superstitious prejudice, it is with difficulty they are prevailed upon, by a large reward which the India Company offers, to use methods of destroying them till they have sustained some particular injury in their own family or kindred, and their ideas of fatalism contribute to render them insensible to the risk.

TIGER-TRAPS.

Their traps, of which they can make variety, are very ingeniously contrived. Sometimes they are in the nature of strong cages, with falling doors, into which the beast is enticed by a goat or dog enclosed as a bait; sometimes they manage that a large timber shall fall, in a groove, across his back; he is noosed about the loins with strong rattans, or he is led to ascend a plank, nearly balanced, which, turning when he is past the centre, lets him fall upon sharp stakes prepared below. Instances have occurred of a tiger being caught by one of the former modes, which had many marks in his body of the partial success of this last expedient. The escapes, at times, made from them by the natives are surprising, but these accounts in general carry too romantic an air to admit of being repeated as facts. The size and strength of the species which prevails on this island are prodigious. They are said to break with a stroke of their forepaw the leg of a horse or a buffalo; and the largest prey they kill is without difficulty dragged by them into the woods. This they usually perform on the second night, being supposed, on the first, to gratify themselves with sucking the blood only. Time is by this delay afforded to prepare for their destruction; and to the methods already enumerated, beside shooting them, I should add that of placing a vessel of water, strongly impregnated with arsenic, near the carcase, which is fastened to a tree to prevent its being carried off: The tiger having satiated himself with the flesh, is prompted to assuage his thirst with the tempting liquor at hand, and perishes in the indulgence. Their chief subsistence is most probably the unfortunate monkeys with which the woods abound. They are described as alluring them to their fate, by a fascinating power, similar to what has been supposed of the snake, and I am not incredulous enough to treat the idea with contempt, having myself observed that when an alligator, in a river, comes under an overhanging bough of a tree, the monkeys, in a state of alarm and distraction, crowd to the extremity, and, chattering and trembling, approach nearer and nearer to the amphibious monster that waits to devour them as they drop, which their fright and number renders almost unavoidable. These alligators likewise occasion the loss of many inhabitants, frequently destroying the people as they bathe in the river, according to their regular custom, and which the perpetual evidence of the risk attending it cannot deter them from. A superstitious idea of their sanctity also (or, perhaps, of consanguinity, as related in the journal of the Endeavour's voyage) preserves these destructive animals from molestation, although, with a hook of sufficient strength, they may be taken without much difficulty. A musket-ball appears to have no effect upon their impenetrable hides.

FISHING.

Besides the common methods of taking fish, of which the seas that wash the coasts of Sumatra afford an extraordinary variety and abundance, the natives employ a mode, unpractised, I apprehend, in any part of Europe. They steep the root of a certain climbing plant, called tuba, of strong narcotic qualities, in the water where the fish are observed, which produces such an effect that they become intoxicated and to appearance dead, float on the surface of the water, and are taken with the hand. This is generally made use of in the basins of water formed by the ledges of coral rock which, having no outlet, are left full when the tide has ebbed.* In the manufacture and employment of the casting-net they are particularly expert, and scarcely a family near the sea-coast is without one. To supply this demand great quantities of the pulas twine are brought down from the hill-country to be there worked up; and in this article we have an opportunity of observing the effect of that conformation which renders the handiwork of orientals (unassisted by machinery) so much more delicate than that of the western people. Mr. Crisp possessed a net of silk, made in the country behind Padang, the meshes of which were no wider than a small fingernail, that opened sixteen feet in diameter. With such they are said to catch small fish in the extensive lake situated on the borders of Menangkabau.

(*Footnote. In Captain Cook's second voyage is a plate representing a plant used for the same purpose at Otaheite, which is the exact delineation of one whose appearance I was well acquainted with in Sumatra, and which abounds in many parts of the sea-beach, but which is a different plant from the tuba-akar, but may be another kind, named tuba-biji. In South America also, we are informed, the inhabitants procure fish after this extraordinary manner, employing three different kinds of plants; but whether any of them be the same with that of Otaheite or Sumatra I am ignorant. I have lately been informed that this practice is not unknown in England, but has been prohibited. It is termed foxing: the drug made use of was the Coculus indicus.)

BIRD-CATCHING.

Birds, particularly the plover (cheruling) and quails (puyu) are caught by snares or springs laid for them in the grass. These are of iju, which resembles horsehair, many fathoms in length, and disposed in such a manner as to entangle their feet; for which purpose they are gently driven towards the snares. In some parts of the country they make use of clasp-nets. I never observed a Sumatran to fire a shot at a bird, though many of them, as well as the more eastern people, have a remarkably fine aim; but the mode of letting off the matchlocks, which are the pieces most habitual to them, precludes the possibility of shooting flying.

GUNPOWDER.

Gunpowder is manufactured in various parts of the island, but less in the southern provinces than amongst the people of Menangkabau, the Battas, and Achinese, whose frequent wars demand large supplies. It appears however, by an agreement upon record, formed in 1728, that the inhabitants of Anak-sungei were restricted from the manufacture, which they are stated to have carried to a considerable extent. It is made, as with us, of proportions of charcoal, sulphur, and nitre, but the composition is very imperfectly granulated, being often hastily prepared in small quantities for immediate use. The last article, though found in the greatest quantity in the saltpetre-caves before spoken of, is most commonly procured from goat's dung, which is always to be had in plenty.

SUGAR.

Sugar (as has already been observed) is commonly made for domestic use from the juice of a species of palm, boiled till a consistence is formed, but scarcely at all granulated, being little more than a thick syrup. This spread upon leaves to dry, made into cakes, and afterwards folded up in a peculiar vegetable substance called upih, which is the sheath that envelopes the branch of the pinang tree where it is inserted in the stem. In this state it is called jaggri, and, beside its ordinary uses as sugar, it is mixed with chunam in making cement for buildings, and that exquisite plaster for walls which, on the coast of Coromandel, equals Parian marble in whiteness and polish. But in many parts of the island sugar is also made from the sugar-cane. The rollers of the mill used for this purpose are worked by the endless screw instead of cogs, and are turned with the hand by means of a bar passing through one of the rollers which is higher than the other. As an article of traffic amongst the natives it is not considerable, nor have they the art of distilling arrack, the basis of which is molasses, along with the juice of the anau or of the coconut palm in a state of fermentation. Both however are manufactured by Europeans.*

(*Footnote. Many attempts have been made by the English to bring to perfection the manufacture of sugar and arrack from the canes; but the expenses, particularly of the slaves, were always found to exceed the advantages. Within these few years (about 1777) that the plantations and works were committed to the management of Mr. Henry Botham, it has manifestly appeared that the end is to be obtained by employing the Chinese in the works of the field and allowing them a proportion of the produce for their labour. The manufacture had arrived at considerable perfection when the breaking out of war gave a check to its progress; but the path is pointed out, and it may be worth pursuing. The sums of money thrown into Batavia for arrack and sugar have been immense.)

SALT.

Salt is here, as in most other countries, an article of general consumption. The demand for it is mostly supplied by cargoes imported, but they also manufacture it themselves. The method is tedious. They kindle a fire close to the sea-beach, and gradually pour upon it sea water. When this has been continued for a certain time, the water evaporating, and the salt being precipitated among the ashes, they gather these in baskets, or in funnels made of the bark or leaves of trees, and again pour seawater on them till the particles of salt are well separated, and pass with the water into a vessel placed below to receive them. This water, now strongly impregnated, is boiled till the salt adheres in a thick crust to the bottom and sides of the vessel. In burning a square fathom of firewood a skilful person procures about five gallons of salt. What is thus made has so considerable a mixture of the salt of the wood that it soon dissolves, and cannot be carried far into the country. The coarsest grain is preferred.

ART OF MEDICINE.

The art of medicine among the Sumatrans consists almost entirely in the application of simples, in the virtues of which they are well skilled. Every old man and woman is a physician, and their rewards depend upon their success; but they generally procure a small sum in advance under the pretext of purchasing charms.* The mode of practice is either by administering the juices of certain trees and herbs inwardly, or by applying outwardly a poultice of leaves chopped small upon the breast or part affected, renewing it as soon as it becomes dry. For internal pains they rub oil on a large leaf of a stimulant quality, and, heating it before the fire, clap it on the body of the patient as a blister, which produces very powerful effects. Bleeding they never use, but the people of the neighbouring island of Nias are famous for their skill in cupping, which they practise in a manner peculiar to themselves.

(*Footnote. Charms are there hung about the necks of children, as in Europe, and also worn by persons whose situations expose them to risk. They are long narrow scrolls of paper, filled with incoherent scraps of verse, which are separated from each other by a variety of fanciful drawings. A charm against an ague I once accidentally met with, which from circumstances I conclude to be a translation of such as are employed by the Portuguese Christians in India. Though not properly belonging to my subject, I present it to the reader. "(Sign of the cross). When Christ saw the cross he trembled and shaked; and they said unto him hast thou an ague? and he said unto them, I have neither ague nor fever; and whosoever bears these words, either in writing or in mind, shall never be troubled with ague or fever. So help thy servants, O Lord, who put their trust in thee!" From the many folds that appear in the original I have reason to apprehend that it had been worn, and by some Englishmen, whom frequent sickness and the fond love of life had rendered weak and superstitious enough to try the effects of this barbarous and ridiculous quackery.)

FEVERS.

In fevers they give a decoction of the herb lakun, and bathe the patient, for two or three mornings, in warm water. If this does not prove effectual, they pour over him, during the paroxysm, a quantity of cold water, rendered more chilly by the daun sedingin (Cotyledon laciniata) which, from the sudden revulsion it causes, brings on a copious perspiration. Pains and swellings in the limbs are likewise cured by sweating; but for this purpose they either cover themselves over with mats and sit in the sunshine at noon, or, if the operation be performed within doors, a lamp, and sometimes a pot of boiling herbs, is enclosed in the covering with them.

LEPROSY.

There are two species of leprosy known in these parts. The milder sort, or impetigo, as I apprehend it to be, is very common among the inhabitants of Nias, great numbers of whom are covered with a white scurf or scales that renders them loathsome to the sight. But this distemper, though disagreeable from the violent itching and other inconveniences with which it is attended, does not appear immediately to affect the health, slaves in that situation being bought and sold for field and other outdoor work. It is communicated from parents to their offspring, but though hereditary it is not contagious. I have sometimes been induced to think it nothing more than a confirmed stage of the serpigo or ringworm, or it may be the same with what is elsewhere termed the shingles. I have known a Nias man who has effected a temporary removal of this scurf by the frequent application of the golinggang or daun kurap (Cassia alata) and such other herbs as are used to cure the ringworm, and sometimes by rubbing gunpowder and strong acids to his skin; but it always returned after some time. The other species with which the country people are in some instances affected is doubtless, from the description given of its dreadful symptoms, that severe kind of leprosy which has been termed elephantiasis, and is particularly described in the Asiatic Researches Volume 2, the skin coming off in flakes, and the flesh falling from the bones, as in the lues venerea. This disorder being esteemed highly infectious, the unhappy wretch who labours under it is driven from the village he belonged to into the woods, where victuals are left for him from time to time by his relations. A prang and a knife are likewise delivered to him, that he may build himself a hut, which is generally erected near to some river or lake, continual bathing being supposed to have some effect in removing the disorder, or alleviating the misery of the patient. Few instances of recovery have been known. There is a disease called the nambi which bears some affinity to this, attacking the feet chiefly, the flesh of which it eats away. As none but the lowest class of people seem to suffer from this complaint I imagine it proceeds in a great degree from want of cleanliness.

SMALLPOX.

The smallpox (katumbuhan) sometimes visits the island and makes terrible ravages. It is regarded as a plague, and drives from the country thousands whom the infection spares. Their method of stopping its progress (for they do not attempt a cure) is by converting into a hospital or receptacle for the rest that village where lie the greatest number of sick, whither they send all who are attacked by the disorder from the country round. The most effectual methods are pursued to prevent any person's escape from this village, which is burnt to the ground as soon as the infection has spent itself or devoured all the victims thus offered to it. Inoculation was an idea long unthought of, and, as it could not be universal, it was held to be a dangerous experiment for Europeans to introduce it partially, in a country where the disorder makes its appearance at distant intervals only, unless those periods could be seized and the attempts made when and where there might be well-founded apprehension of its being communicated in the natural way. Such an opportunity presented itself in 1780, when great numbers of people (estimated at a third of the population) were swept away in the course of that and the two following years; whilst upon those under the immediate influence of the English and Dutch settlements inoculation was practised with great success. I trust that the preventive blessing of vaccination has or will be extended to a country so liable to be afflicted with this dreadful scourge. A distemper called chachar, much resembling the smallpox, and in its first stages mistaken for it, is not uncommon. It causes an alarm but does not prove mortal, and is probably what we term the chickenpox.

VENEREAL DISEASE.

The venereal disease, though common in the Malay bazaars, is in the inland country almost unknown. A man returning to his village with the infection is shunned by the inhabitants as an unclean and interdicted person. The Malays are supposed to cure it with the decoction of a china-root, called by them gadong, which causes a salivation.

INSANITY.

When a man is by sickness or otherwise deprived of his reason, or when subject to convulsion fits, they imagine him possessed by an evil spirit, and their ceremony of exorcism is performed by putting the unfortunate wretch into a hut, which they set fire to about his ears, suffering him to make his escape through the flames in the best manner he can. The fright, which would go nigh to destroy the intellects of a reasonable man, may perhaps have under contrary circumstances an opposite effect.

SCIENCES.

The skill of the Sumatrans in any of the sciences, is, as may be presumed, very limited.

ARITHMETIC.

Some however I have met with who, in arithmetic, could multiply and divide, by a single multiplier or divisor, several places of figures. Tens of thousands (laksa) are the highest class of numbers the Malay language has a name for. In counting over a quantity of small articles each tenth, and afterwards each hundredth piece is put aside; which method is consonant with the progress of scientific numeration, and probably gave it origin. When they may have occasion to recollect at a distance of time the tale of any commodities they are carrying to market, or the like, the country people often assist their memory by tying knots on a string, which is produced when they want to specify the number. The Peruvian quipos were I suppose an improvement upon this simple invention.

MEASURES.

They estimate the quantity of most species of merchandise by what we call dry measure, the use of weights, as applied to bulky articles, being apparently introduced among them by foreigners; for the pikul and catti are used only on the sea-coast and places which the Malays frequent. The kulah or bamboo, containing very nearly a gallon, is the general standard of measure among the Rejangs: of these eight hundred make a koyan: the chupah is one quarter of a bamboo. By this measure almost all articles, even elephants' teeth, are bought and sold; but by a bamboo of ivory they mean so much as is equal in weight to a bamboo of rice. This still includes the idea of weight, but is not attended with their principal objection to that mode of ascertaining quantity which arises, as they say, from the impossibility of judging by the eye of the justness of artificial weights, owing to the various materials of which they may be composed, and to which measurement is not liable. The measures of length here, as perhaps originally among every people upon earth, are taken from the dimensions of the human body. The deppa, or fathom, is the extent of the arms from each extremity of the fingers: the etta, asta, or cubit, is the forearm and hand; kaki is the foot; jungka is the span; and jarri, which signifies a finger, is the inch. These are estimated from the general proportions of middle-sized men, others making an allowance in measuring, and not regulated by an exact standard.

GEOGRAPHY.

The ideas of geography among such of them as do not frequent the sea are perfectly confined, or rather they entertain none. Few of them know that the country they inhabit is an island, or have any general name for it. Habit renders them expert in travelling through the woods, where they perform journeys of weeks and months without seeing a dwelling. In places little frequented, where they have occasion to strike out new paths (for roads there are none), they make marks on trees for the future guidance of themselves and others. I have heard a man say, "I will attempt a passage by such a route, for my father, when living, told me that he had left his tokens there." They estimate the distance of places from each other by the number of days, or the proportion of the day, taken up in travelling it, and not by measurement of the space. Their journey, or day's walk, may be computed at about twenty miles; but they can bear a long continuance of fatigue.

ASTRONOMY.

The Malays as well as the Arabs and other Mahometan nations fix the length of the year at three hundred and fifty-four days, or twelve lunar months of twenty-nine days and a half; by which mode of reckoning each year is thrown back about eleven days. The original Sumatrans rudely estimate their annual periods from the revolution of the seasons, and count their years from the number of their crops of grain (taun padi); a practice which, though not pretending to accuracy, is much more useful for the general purposes of life than the lunar period, which is merely adapted to religious observances. They as well as the Malays compute time by lunations, but do not attempt to trace any relation or correspondence between these smaller measures and the solar revolution. Whilst more polished nations were multiplying mistakes and difficulties in their endeavours to ascertain the completion of the sun's course through the ecliptic, and in the meanwhile suffering their nominal seasons to become almost the reverse of nature, these people, without an idea of intercalation, preserved in a rude way the account of their years free from essential, or at least progressive, error and the confusion which attends it. The division of the month into weeks I believe to be unknown except where it has been taught with Mahometanism; the day of the moon's age being used instead of it where accuracy is required; nor do they subdivide the day into hours. To denote the time of day at which any circumstance they find it necessary to speak of happened, they point with their finger to the height in the sky at which the sun then stood. And this mode is the more general and precise as the sun, so near the equator, ascends and descends almost perpendicularly, and rises and sets at all seasons of the year within a few minutes of six o'clock. Scarcely any of the stars or constellations are distinguished by them. They notice however the planet Venus, but do not imagine her to be the same at the different periods of her revolution when she precedes the rising, and follows the setting sun. They are aware of the night on which the new moon should make its appearance, and the Malays salute it with the discharge of guns. They also know when to expect the returns of the tides, which are at their height, on the south-western coast of the island, when that luminary is in the horizon, and ebb as it rises. When they observe a bright star near the moon (or rubbing against her, as they express it), they are apprehensive of a storm, as European sailors foretell a gale from the sharpness of her horns. These are both, in part, the consequence of an unusual clearness in the air, which, proceeding from an extraordinary alteration of the state of the atmosphere, may naturally be followed by a violent rushing of the circumjacent parts to restore the equilibrium, and thus prove the prognostic of high wind. During an eclipse they make a loud noise with sounding-instruments to prevent one luminary from devouring the other, as the Chinese, to frighten away the dragon, a superstition that has its source in the ancient systems of astronomy (particularly the Hindu) where the nodes of the moon are identified with the dragon's head and tail. They tell of a man in the moon who is continually employed in spinning cotton, but that every night a rat gnaws his thread and obliges him to begin his work afresh. This they apply as an emblem of endless and ineffectual labour, like the stone of Sisyphus, and the sieves of the Danaides.

With history and chronology the country people are but little acquainted, the memory of past events being preserved by tradition only.

MUSIC.

They are fond of music and have many instruments in use among them, but few, upon inquiry, appear to be original, being mostly borrowed from the Chinese and other more eastern people; particularly the kalintang, gong, and sulin. The violin has found its way to them from the westward. The kalintang resembles the sticcado and the harmonica; the more common ones having the cross-pieces, which are struck with two little hammers, of split bamboo, and the more perfect of a certain composition of metal which is very sonorous. The gongs, a kind of bell, but differing much in shape and struck on the outside, are cast in sets regularly tuned to thirds, fourth, fifth, and octave, and often serve as a bass, or under part, to the kalintang. They are also sounded for the purpose of calling together the inhabitants of the village upon any particular occasion; but the more ancient and still common instrument for this use is a hollowed log of wood named katut. The sulin is the Malayan flute. The country flute is called serdum. It is made of bamboo, is very imperfect, having but few stops, and resembles much an instrument described as found among the people of Otaheite. A single hole underneath is covered with the thumb of the left hand, and the hole nearest the end at which it is blown, on the upper side, with a finger of the same hand. The other two holes are stopped with the right-hand fingers. In blowing they hold it inclined to the right side. They have various instruments of the drum kind, particularly those called tingkah, which are in pairs and beaten with the hands at each end. They are made of a certain kind of wood hollowed out, covered with dried goat-skins, and laced with split rattans. It is difficult to obtain a proper knowledge of their division of the scale, as they know nothing of it in theory. The interval we call an octave seems to be divided with them into six tones, without any intermediate semitones, which must confine their music to one key. It consists in general of but few notes, and the third is the interval that most frequently occurs. Those who perform on the violin use the same notes as in our division, and they tune the instrument by fifths to a great nicety. They are fond of playing the octave, but scarcely use any other chord. The Sumatran tunes very much resemble, to my ear, those of the native Irish, and have usually, like them, a flat third: the same has been observed of the music of Bengal, and probably it will be found that the minor key obtains a preference amongst all people at a certain stage of civilization.