Each prahu carries a large sail. The day is spent in small excursions on the ocean ; at night the vessels are anchored near the shore or fixed to a pole. Smaller vessels are generally drawn upon the beach. When opportunities allow, they seek the shelter of small bays or the outlets of rivers. They often subsist for many days, success ively on fish, crabs, oysters, or mussels, which they consume indiscriminately, but they are ex traordinarily fond of vegetable food, and when ever they have an opportunity all of them devour double the quantity of rice that will suffice another Malay. The places they occupy or have lately visited are easily known by the remnants of fish, by piles of shells, etc., and are also indicated at a great distance by a nauseous odour. Cleanliness is by no means one of their qualities ; they are rarely exempt from eruptions on the skin, and they complain of diseases of the bowels.
They spend their time chiefly in fishing or in preparing fishing-tackle of various kinds. The preparation and arrangement of the leaves of a species of pandanus for sails is the business of the females. Those who have attached themselves to a particular spot sell and barter dried fish, trepang, agar-agar. In the year 1825 the Carimon Islands (Krimun) were occupied by Orang Laut, who plundered when they could do it with impunity. The Carimons, from their central position, were a favourite haunt of pirates, and the strait separat ing the two islands was seldom without some of their boats: is between 128,500 and 140,000 square miles in area. Its inhabitants have been estimated at from 2 to 4z millions. Among the people of the Archipelago generally, the island is known as Pulo Purichu, also Pulo Ifidalas ; the Javanese term it Tana-Palembang, the land of Palembang. The origin of the term Sumatra is unknown. The Malay races proper occupy about half the area of the island. Their chief tribes are the Korinchi, the Orang Rawa, Orang Palembang, Rejang, Serawi, Lampong, Batta, the Orang Kubu or Orang Lubu. Marsden mentioned the Orang Gugu, and in the southern belt the Orang Abung, described as a head-hunting race.
Excepting Menangkabau, the whole coast of Sumatra is nominally under five sovereignties, viz. Palembang, Jambi, Indragiri, Siak, and Acheen. Menangkabau province is the plateau in the in terior, north of the town of Padang. Palembang is nearly all Muhammadan.
The Achi or Achilles° are the most civilised, and through them Muhammadanism, with such arts and civilisation as accompanied it, were directly or indirectly communicated to the other islands in the Archipelago. They are supposed to
be a mixture of the Batta and Malay with the Arab, and with the Chulia natives of the west of India. During the latter half of the 17th century, four queens reigned iu succession over Acheen.
The Battu are partly under the Dutch, partly independent, and the latter continue cannibals. They do not allow marriages between people of the same clan.
In Sumatra there were formerly three perfectly distinct kinds of marriage,—the Jugur, in which the man purchased the woman ; the Ambel-anak, in which the woman purchased the man ; and the Semando, in which theyjoined on terms of equality. In the Ambel-anak marriage, the father of a virgin makes choice of some young man for her husband, generally from an inferior family, which renounces all further right to or interest in him, and he is taken into the house of his father-in-law, who kills a buffalo on the occasion, and receives twenty dollars from his son's rela tions. After this, the buruk baik'nia (the good and bad of him) is invested in the wife's family. If he murder or rob, they pay the bangun or the fine. if ho be murdered, they receive the bangun. They are liable to any debts he may contract in marriage, those prior to it remaining with his parents. He lives in the family in a state between that of a sou and a debtor. He partakes as a son of what the house affords, but has no property in himself. His rice plantation, the produce of his pepper garden, with everything that he can gain or earn, belongs to the family. He is liable to be divorced at their pleasure, and though he has children, must leave all, and return naked as he came.
A Sumatran scrupulously abstains from pro nouncing his own name, merely as a punctilio in manners. It occasions him infinite embarrassment when a stranger, unacquainted with their customs, requires it of him. As soon as he recovers from his confusion, he solicits the interposition of his neighbour. He is never addressed, except in the case of a superior dictating to his dependent, in the second person, but always in the third, using his name or title instead of the pronoun ; and when these are unknown, a general title of respect is substituted, and they say, for instance, Apa orang kaya punia suka,' What is his honour's pleasure ?' for What is your or your honour's pleasure?' When ignominious persons are spoken to, use is made of the personal pronoun kau (a contraction of angkau), particularly expressive of contempt.