The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

VIII.] SUMATRA. 97little doubt, from their having bnen originally a maritime andwater-loving joeople, who built tlieir houses on posts in thewater, and only migrated gradually inland, first up the riversand streams, and then into the drj^ interior. Habits Avliich wereat once so convenient and so cleanlj-, and which had been solong practised as to become a portion of tlie domestic life of thenation, were of course continued when the first settlers builttheir Iiouses inland ;and without a regular system of drainage,the arrangement of tlie villages is such, that any other systemwould be very inconvenient.In all these Sumatran tillages I found considerable difficultyin getting anything to eat. It was not the season for vegetables,and when, after much trouble, I managed to procure some yamsof a curious variety, I found them hard and scarcely eatable.Fowls were very scarce ; and fruit was reduced to one of thepoorest kinds of banana. The natives (during the wet seasonat least) live exclusively on rice, as the poorer Irish do onpotatoes. A pot of rice cooked very dry and eaten with .saltand red peppers, twice a day, forms tlieir entire food during a \/large part of the year. This is no sign of poverty, but is simplycustom ; for their wives and children are loaded with silver armletsfrom wrist to elbow, and carry dozens of silver coins strunground tlieir necks or suspended from their ears.As I had moved away from Palembang, I had found the Malayspoken by the common people less and less pure, till at lengthit became quite unintelligible, although the continual recurrenceof many well-known words assured me it was a form of Malay,and enabled me to guess at the main subject of conversation.This district had a very bad reputation a few years ago, andtravellers were frequently robbed and murdered. Fightsbetween village and village wei'e also of frequent occurrence,and many lives were lost, owing to dis^Dutes about boundariesor intrigues "wdth women. Now, however, since the country hasbeen divided into districts under " Controlleurs,'"' who visit everyvillage in turn to hear complaints and settle disputes, suchthings are no more heard of. This is one of the numerousexamples I have met with of the good effects of the DutchGovei-nment. It exercises a strict surveillance over its mostdistant possessions, establishes a form of government welladajDted to the character of the people, reforms abuses, punishescrimes, and makes itself everywhere respected by the nativepopulation.Lobo Raman is a central point of the east end of Sumatra,being about a hundred and twenty miles from the sea to theeast, north, and west. The surface is undulating, with nomountains or even hills, and there is no rock, the soil beinggenerally a red friable clay. Numbers of small streams andrivers intersect the country, and it is pi-etty equally di"\idedbetween open clearings and patches of forest, both virgin andsecond growth, with abundance of fruit trees ;and tJiere is noH