from the commission of mean and fraudulent actions.  They possess much low cunning and plausible duplicity, and know how to dissemble the strongest passions and most inveterate antipathy beneath the utmost composure of features till the opportunity of gratifying their resentment offers.  Veracity, gratitude, and integrity are not to be found in the list of their virtues, and their minds are almost strangers to the sentiments of honour and infamy.  They are jealous and vindictive.  Their courage is desultory, the effect of a momentary enthusiasm which enables them to perform deeds of incredible desperation; but they are strangers to that steady magnanimity, that cool heroic resolution in battle, which constitutes in our idea the perfection of this quality, and renders it a virtue.* Yet it must be observed that, from an apathy almost paradoxical, they suffer under sentence of death, in cases where no indignant passions could operate to buoy up the mind to a contempt of punishment, with astonishing composure and indifference; uttering little more on these occasions than a proverbial saying, common among them, expressive of the inevitability of fate—­apa buli buat?  To this stoicism, their belief in predestination, and very imperfect ideas of a future, eternal existence, doubtless contribute.

(Footnote.  In the history of the Portuguese wars in this part of the East there appear some exceptions to this remark, and particularly in the character of Laksamanna (his title of commander-in-chief being mistaken for his proper name), who was truly a great man and most consummate warrior.)

Some writer has remarked that a resemblance is usually found between the disposition and qualities of the beasts proper to any country and those of the indigenous inhabitants of the human species, where an intercourse with foreigners has not destroyed the genuineness of their character.  The Malay may thus be compared to the buffalo and the tiger.  In his domestic state he is indolent, stubborn, and voluptuous as the former, and in his adventurous life he is insidious, bloodthirsty, and rapacious as the latter.  Thus also the Arab is said to resemble his camel, and the placid Hindu his cow.

CHARACTER OF NATIVE SUMATRANS.

The Sumatran of the interior country, though he partakes in some degree of the Malayan vices, and this partly from the contagion of example, possesses many exclusive virtues; but they are more properly of the negative than the positive kind.  He is mild, peaceable, and forbearing, unless his anger be roused by violent provocation, when he is implacable in his resentments.  He is temperate and sober, being equally abstemious in meat and drink.  The diet of the natives is mostly vegetable; water is their only beverage; and though they will kill a fowl or a goat for a stranger, whom perhaps they never saw before, nor ever expect to see again, they are rarely guilty of that extravagance for themselves; nor even at their festivals (bimbang),