give, declares how many of their own party are loft; the number of war-hoops, the number of prifoners they have taken.

It is difficult to defcribe thefe cries, but the best idea I can convey of them, is, that the former confifts of the found Whoo, Whoo, Whoop, which is continued in a long thrill tone, nearly till the breath is exhaufted, and then broken off with a fudden elevation of the voice. The latter, of a loud cry, of much the fame kind, which is modulated into notes by the hand being placed before the mouth. Both of them might be heard to a very confiderable diftance.

Whilst thefe are uttering, the perfons to whom they are defigned to convey the intelligence continue motionless and all attention. When this ceremony is performed, the whole village iffue out to learn the particulars of the relation they have just heard in general terms, and according as the news proves mournful, or the contrary, they anfwer by fo many acclamations or cries of lamentation.

4

Being by this time arrived at the village or camp, the women and children arm themselves with sticks

and bludgeons, and form themfelves into two ranks, through which the prifoners are obliged to pafs. The treatment they undergo before they reach the extremity of the line, is very severe. Sometimes they are fo beaten over the head and face, as to have fcarcely any remains of life; and happy would it be for them if by this ufage an end was put to their wretched beings. But their tormentors take care that none of the blows they give prove mortal, as they wish to reserve the miferable fufferers for more fevere inflictions.

After having undergone this introductory discipline, they are bound hand and foot, whilst the chiefs hold a council, in which their fate is determined. Those who are decreed to be put to death by the ufual torments, are delivered to the chief of the warriors; fuch as are to be fpared are given into the hands of the chief of the nation : fo that in a fhort time all the pri foners may be affured of their fate, as the fentence now pronounced is irrevocable. The former they term being configned to the houfe of death, the latter to the house of grace.

NATURAL

Account of the interior Parts of Sumatra, and of a neighbouring Iland, never known to have been vifited by any European. From the Philofophical Tranfactions.

'HE climate is far from being fo difagreeably hot as it is reprefented to be, or as one might expect from our vicinity to the line; the thermometer (of which I have kept a journal for a year paft) is never lower in a morning at fix, than 69 deg. or higher than 6 deg. At noon it varies from 79 to 88 deg. and at eight P. M. from 73 to 78 or 80 deg. I have once only feen it at 90 deg. and in the Batta country, immediately under the line, I have feen it frequently at fix A. M. as low as 61 deg. We have always a feabreeze, which fets in at about nine o'clock, and continues to fun-fet, and is generally pretty fresh; this tempers the heat fo much, that I have never been incommoded by it (even in the midft of the day) fo much as I have frequently been on a fummer's day in England. Rain is very frequent here; fometimes very heavy, and almost always attended with thunder and lightning. Earthquakes are not uncommon; we have had one in particular, fince my arrival, which was very violent, and did much damage in VOL. XXI.

the country. volcanoes on the island; one within fight of Malbro', which almost conftantly emits smoke, and, at the time of the earthquake, emitted fire.

There are feveral

The English fettled here (exclufive of the military) are between feventy and eighty, of which about fifty are at Malbro'. They live full as freely as in England, and yet we have loft but one gentleman during the laft fix months; a proof that this climate is not very unhealthy.

The people who inhabit the coaft are Malays, who came hither from the peninfula of Malacca: but the interior parts are inhabited by a very different people, and who have hitherto had no connexion with the Europeans. Their language and character differ much from thofe of the Malays, the latter ufing the Arabic character; but all the interior nations which I have vifited, though they differ from one another in language, use the fame character.

The people between the districts of the English company, and thofe of the Dutch at Palimban, on the other fide the island, write on long narrow flips of the bark of a tree, with a piece of bamboo; they be gin at the bottom, and write from the left hand to the right, which I G

think

think is contrary to the cuftom of all other eastern nations.

This country is very hilly, and the accefs to it exceedingly difficult, there being no poffibility of a horfe going over the hills. I was obliged to walk the whole way, and in many places bare-foot, on account of the steepness of the precipices. The inhabitants are a free people, and live in fmall villages, called Doofans, independent of each other, and governed each by its own chief [Doopattee]. All of them have laws, fome written ones, by which they punish offenders, and terminate difputes. They have almoft all of them, particularly the women, large fwellings in the throat, fome nearly as big as a man's head, but in general as big as an oftrich's egg, like the goitres, of the Alps. It is by them faid to be owing to their drinking a cold white water; I fancy it must be fome mineral water they mean. Near their country is a volcano: it is very mountainous, and abounds with fulphur, and I dare fay with metals too, though no mines are worked here. If this 'diftemper be produced here by this caufe, perhaps in the Alpine countries it may take its origin from a fimilar one, and not, as has been imagined, from fnow-water: certain it is, there is no fnow here to occafion it. In almoft all the central parts from Moco moco, northward, they find gold and fome iron; but this diftemper is un. known there. I have met here with a rivulet of a ftrong fulphu rated water, which was fo hot, a quarter of a mile below its fource, that I could not walk across it.

The country called the Caffia country, lies in latitude 1 deg. north

inland of our fettlement of Tap panooly it is well inhabited by a people called Battas, who differ from all the other inhabitants of Sumatra, in language, manners, and cuftoms. They have no reli gious worship, but have fome confufed idea of three fuperior beings; two of which are of a benign nature; and the third an evil genius, whom they ftile Murgifo, and to whom they ufe fome kind of in. cantation, to prevent his doing them hurt. They feem to think their ancestors are a kind of fuperior beings, attendant always upon them. They have no king, but live in villages [Compongs] abfolutely independent of each other, and perpetually at war with one another: their villages they fortify very ftrongly, with double fences of camphire plank, pointed, and placed with their points projecting outwards, and between thefe fences they put pieces of bamboo, hardened by fire, and likewife pointed, which are concealed by the grafs, but will run quite through a man's foot.

Without thefe fences they plant a prickly fpecies of bamboo, which foon forms an impenetrable hedge. They never ftir out of thefe Compongs unarmed; their arms are match-lock guns, which, as well as the powder, are made in the country, and fpears with long iron heads. They do not fight in an open manner, but way-lay and fhoot or take prifoner fingle people in the woods or paddy-fields. Thefe prifoners, if they happen to be the people who have given the offence, they put to death and eat, and their kulls they hang up as trophies in the houfes where the unmarried men and boys eat and fleep. They allow of polygamy;

a man

a man may purchafe as many wives as he pleafes; but their number feldom exceeds eight. They have no marriage ceremony; but, when the purchase is agreed on by the father, the man kills a buffalo or a horfe, invites as many people as he can; and he and the woman fit and eat together before the whole company, and are afterwards confidered as man and wife. If afterwards the man chooses to part with his wife, he fends her hack to her relations with all her trinkets, but they keep the purchase money; if the wife diflikes her husband, her relations must repay double the purchase-money.

A man detected in adultery is punished with death, and the body eaten by the offended party and his friends: the woman becomes the flave of her husband, and is ren-dered infamous by cutting off her hair. Public theft is alfo punished with death, and the body eaten. All their wives live in the fame houfe with the husband, and the houses have no partition; but each wife has her feparate fire-place.

Girls and unmarried women wear fix or eight large rings of thick brafs wire, about their neck, and great numbers of tin rings in their ears; but all these ornaments are laid afide when they marry.

They often preferve the dead bodies of their Radjas (by which name they call every freeman that has property, of which there are fometimes one, fometimes more, in one Compong, and the reft are vaffals) for three months and up. wards before they bury them: this` they continue to do by putting the body into a coffin well caulked with dammar (a kind of rezin): they place the coffin in the upper part

of the houfe, and having made a hole at the bottom, fit thereto a piece of bamboo, which reaches. quite through the house, and three or four feet into the ground: this ferves to convey all putrid moifture from the corpfe without occafioning any fmell. They feem to have great ceremonies at thefe funerals; but they would not allow me to fee them. I faw feveral figures dreffed up like men, and heard a kind of finging and dancing all night before the body was interred: they alfo fired a great many guns. At thefe funerals they kill a great many buffaloes; every Radja, for a confiderable diftance, brings a buffalo and kills it at the grave of the deceased, fometimes even a year after his interment; we affifted at the ceremony of killing the 106th buffalo at a Radja's

grave.

The Battas have abundance of black cattle, buffaloes, and horfes, all which they eat. They also have great quantities of small black dogs, with erect pointed ears, which they fatten and eat. Rats, and all forts of wild animals, whether killed by them or found dead, they eat indifferently. Man's flefh may rather be faid to be eaten in terrorem, than to be their commen food; yet they prefer it to all others, and fpeak with peculiar rapture of the foles of the feet and palms of the hands. They expreffed much furprize on being informed that white people did not kill, much lefs eat, their prifoners.

These people, though cannibals, received me with great hofpitality and civility; and though it was thought very dangerous for any European to venture among them,

as they are a warlike people, and extremely jealous of ftrangers; yet I took only fix Malays as a guard, but was escorted from place to place by thirty, forty, and fometimes one hundred of the natives, armed with match-lock guns and matches burning.

It is from this country that most of the cafia fent to Europe is procured; and I went there in hopes of finding the cinnamon, but without fuccefs. The caffia tree grows to fifty or fixty feet, with a ftem of about two feet diameter, with a beautiful regular spreading head; its flowers or fruit I could not then fee, and the country people have a notion that it produces neither.

Camphire and Benjamin trees. are in this country in great abundance; the former grows to the fize of our largeft oaks, and is the common timber in ufe: I have feen trees near one hundred feet high. Its leaves are accuminated, and very different from the camphire tree feen in the botanic gardens, which is the tree from which the Japanese procure their camphire by a chemical procefs; whereas in thefe trees the camphire is found native in a concrete form. Native camphire fells here at upwards of zool. per cwt. to carry to China; what the Chinese do to it, I cannot fay; but, though they purchafe it at 250l. or 300l. they fell it again for Europe at about a quarter of the money. I have never been able to fee the flower of the camphire tree; fome abortive fruit I have frequently found under the trees; they are in a cup like an acorn, but the lacing calycis are four or five times longer than the feed.

I have taken other journies into different parts of the interior country, never before vifited by any

I

Europeans. Thefe journies were performed on foot, through fuch roads, fwamps, &c. as were to appearance almost impaffable. have been hitherto fo fortunate as to meet with no obftruction from the natives; but, on the contrary, have been hofpitably received every where. Almost all the country has been covered with thick woods of trees moftly new and undefcribed, and is not one-hundredth part inhabited.

It is amazing how poor the Fauna of this country is, particu larly in the mammalia and aves. We have abundance of the fimia gilbon of BurrON: they are quite black, about three feet high, and their arms reach to the ground when they ftand erect; they walk on their hind legs only, but I believe very rarely come down to the ground. I have feen hundreds of them together on the tops of high trees. We have feveral other fpecies of the fimia alfo; but one feldoms fees them but at a great diftance. The oerang oatan, or wild-man (for that is the meaning of the words), I have heard much talk of, but never feen; nor can I find any of the natives here that have feen it. The tiger is to be heard of in almost every part of this island: I have never feen one yet, though I have frequently heard them when I have flept in the woods, and often seen the marks of their feet. They annually deftroy near one hundred people in the country where the pepper is planted; yet the people are fo infatuated that they feldom kill them, having a notion that they are animated by the fouls of their ancestors.

Of tiger-cats we have two or three forts; elephants, rhinoceros, elks, one or two other kind of

deer,