The history of Sumatra

by William Marsden

SURVEYS.

Once in every year a survey of all the pepper-plantations is taken by the Company's European servants resident at the various settlements, in the neighbourhood of which that article is cultivated. The number of vines in each particular garden is counted; accurate observation is made of its state and condition; orders are given where necessary for further care, for completion of stipulated quantity, renewals, changes of situation for better soil; and rewards and punishments are distributed to the planters as they appear, from the degree of their industry or remissness, deserving of either. Minutes of all these are entered in the survey-book, which, beside giving present information to the chief, and to the governor and council, to whom a copy is transmitted, serves as a guide and check for the survey of the succeeding year. An abstract of the form of the book is as follows. It is divided into sundry columns, containing the name of the village; the names of the planters; the number of chinkareens planted; the number of vines just planted; of young vines, not in a bearing state, three classes or years; of young vines in a bearing state, three classes; of vines in prime; of those on decline; of those that are old, but still productive; the total number; and lastly the quantity of pepper received during the year. A space is left for occasional remarks, and at the conclusion is subjoined a comparison of the totals of each column, for the whole district or residency, with those of the preceding year. This business the reader will perceive to be attended with considerable trouble, exclusive of the actual fatigue of the surveys, which from the nature of the country must necessarily be performed on foot, in a climate not very favourable to such excursions. The journeys in few places can be performed in less than a month, and often require a much longer time.

The arrival of the Company's Resident at each dusun is considered as a period of festivity. The chief, together with the principal inhabitants, entertain him and his attendants with rustic hospitality, and when he retires to rest, his slumbers are soothed, or interrupted, by the songs of young females, who never fail to pay this compliment to the respected guest; and receive in return some trifling ornamental and useful presents (such as looking-glasses, fans, and needles) at his departure.

SUCCESSION OF GARDENS.

The inhabitants, by the original contracts of the headmen with the Company, are obliged to plant a certain number of vines; each family one thousand, and each young unmarried man five hundred; and, in order to keep up the succession of produce, so soon as their gardens attain to their prime state, they are ordered to prepare others, that they may begin to bear as the old ones fall off; but as this can seldom be enforced till the decline becomes evident, and as young gardens are liable to various accidents which older ones are exempt from, the succession is rendered incomplete, and the consequence is that the annual produce of each district fluctuates, and is greater or less in the proportion of the quantity of bearing vines to the whole number. To enter minutely into the detail of this business will not afford much information or entertainment to the generality of readers, who will however be surprised to hear that pepper-planting, though scarcely an art, so little skill appears to be employed in its cultivation, has nevertheless been rendered an abstruse science by the investigations which able men have bestowed upon the subject. These took their rise from censures conveyed for supposed mismanagement, when the investment, or annual provision of pepper, decreased in comparison with preceding years, and which was not satisfactorily accounted for by unfavourable seasons. To obviate such charges it became necessary for those who superintended the business to pay attention to and explain the efficient causes which unavoidably occasioned this fluctuation, and to establish general principles of calculation by which to determine at any time the probable future produce of the different residencies. These will depend upon a knowledge of the medium produce of a determinate number of vines, and the medium number to which this produce is to be applied; both of which are to be ascertained only from a comprehensive view of the subject, and a nice discrimination. Nothing general can be determined from detached instances. It is not the produce of one particular plantation in one particular stage of bearing and in one particular season, but the mean produce of all the various classes of bearing vines collectively, drawn from the experience of several years, that can alone be depended on in calculations of this nature. So in regard to the median number of vines presumed to exist at any residency in a future year, to which the medium produce of a certain number, one thousand, for instance, is to be applied, the quantity of young vines of the first, second, and third year must not be indiscriminately advanced, in their whole extent, to the next annual stage, but a judicious allowance founded on experience must be made for the accidents to which, in spite of a resident's utmost care, they will be exposed. Some are lost by neglect or death of the owner; some are destroyed by inundations, others by elephants and wild buffaloes, and some by unfavourable seasons, and from these several considerations the number of vines will ever be found considerably decreased by the time they have arrived at a bearing state. Another important object of consideration in these matters is the comparative state of a residency at any particular period with what may be justly considered as its medium state. There must exist a determinate proportion between any number of bearing vines and such a number of young as are necessary to replace them when they go off and keep up a regular succession. This will depend in general upon the length of time before they reach a bearing state and during which they afterwards continue in it. If this certain proportion happens at any time to be disturbed the produce must become irregular. Thus, if at any period the number of bearing vines shall be found to exceed their just proportion to the total number, the produce at such period is to be considered as above the mean, and a subsequent decrease may with certainty be predicted, and vice versa. If then this proportion can be known, and the state of population in a residency ascertained, it becomes easy to determine the true medium number of bearing vines in that residency.

There are, agreeably to the form of the survey book, eleven stages or classes of vines, each advanced one year. Of these classes six are bearing and five young. If therefore the gardens were not liable to accidents, but passed on from column to column undiminished, the true proportion of the bearing vines to the young would be as six to five, or to the total, as six to eleven. But the various contingencies above hinted at must tend to reduce this proportion; while, on the other hand, if any of the gardens should continue longer than is necessary to pass through all the stages on the survey-book, or should remain more than one year in a prime state, these circumstances would tend to increase the proportion. What then is the true medium proportion can only be determined from experience, and by comparing the state of a residency at various successive periods. In order to ascertain this point a very ingenious gentleman and able servant of the East India Company, Mr. John Crisp, to whom I am indebted for the most part of what I have laid before the reader on this part of the subject, drew out in the year 1777 a general comparative view of Manna residency, from the surveys of twelve years, annexing the produce of each year. From the statement it appeared that the proportion of the bearing vines to the whole number in that district was no more than 5.1 to 11, instead of 6 to 11, which would be the proportion if not reduced by accidents; and further that, when the whole produce of the twelve years was diffused over the whole number of bearing vines during that period, the produce of one thousand vines came out to be four hundred and fifty-three pounds, which must therefore be estimated as the medium produce of that residency. The same principle of calculation being applied to the other residencies, it appeared that the mean annual produce of one thousand vines, in all the various stages of bearing, taken collectively throughout the country, deduced from the experience of twelve years, was four hundred and four pounds. It likewise became evident from the statements drawn out by that gentleman that the medium annual produce of the Company's settlements on the west coast of Sumatra ought to be estimated at twelve hundred tons, of sixteen hundred weight; which is corroborated by an average of the actual receipts for any considerable number of years.

Thus much will be sufficient to give the reader an idea of pepper-planting as a kind of science. How far in a commercial light this produce answers the Company's views in supporting the settlements, is foreign from my purpose to discuss, though it is a subject on which not a little might be said. It is the history of the island and its inhabitants, and not of the European interests, that I attempt to lay before the public.

SPECIES OF PEPPER.

The natives distinguish three species of pepper, which are called at different places by different names. At Laye, in the Rejang country, they term them lado kawur, lado manna, and lado jambi, from the parts where each sort is supposed to prevail, or from whence it was first brought to them. The lado kawur, or Lampong pepper, is the strongest plant, and bears the largest leaf and fruit; is slower in coming to perfection than the second, but of much longer duration. The leaf and fruit of the lado manna are somewhat smaller, and it has this peculiarity, that it bears soon and in large quantities, but seldom passes the third or fourth year's crop. The jambi, which has deservedly fallen into disrepute, is of the smallest leaf and fruit, very short-lived, and not without difficulty trained to the chinkareen. In some places to the southward they distinguish two kinds only, lado sudul and lado jambi. Lado sulur and lado anggor are not distinctions of species; the former denoting the cuttings of young creeping shoots commonly planted, in opposition to the latter, which is the term for planting by layers.

SEASONS.