By the Mosaic law, if a man left a widow without children his brother was to marry her.  Among the Sumatrans, with or without children, the brother, or nearest male relation of the deceased, unmarried (the father excepted), takes the widow.  This is practised both by Malays and country people.  The brother, in taking the widow to himself, becomes answerable for what may remain due of her purchase money, and in every respect represents the deceased.  This is phrased ganti tikar bantal’nia—­supplying his place on his mat and pillow.

CHASTITY OF THE WOMEN.

Chastity prevails more perhaps among these than any other people.  It is so materially the interest of the parents to preserve the virtue of their daughters unsullied, as they constitute the chief of their substance, that they are particularly watchful in this respect.  But as marriages in general do not take place so early as the forwardness of nature in that climate would admit, it will sometimes happen, notwithstanding their precaution, that a young woman, not choosing to wait her father’s pleasure, tastes the fruit by stealth.  When this is discovered he can oblige the man to marry her, and pay the jujur; or, if he chooses to keep his daughter, the seducer must make good the difference he has occasioned in her value, and also pay the fine, called tippong bumi, for removing the stain from the earth.  Prostitution for hire is I think unknown in the country, and confined to the more polite bazaars, where there is usually a concourse of sailors and others who have no honest settlement of their own, and whom, therefore, it is impossible to restrain from promiscuous concubinage.  At these places vice generally reigns in a degree proportioned to the number and variety of people of different nations who inhabit them or occasionally resort thither.  From the scenes which these sea-ports present travellers too commonly form their judgment, and imprudently take upon them to draw, for the information of the world, a picture of the manners of a people.

The different species of horrid and disgustful crimes, which are emphatically denominated, against nature, are unknown on Sumatra; nor have any of their languages terms to express such ideas.

INCEST.

Incest, or the intermarriage of persons within a certain degree of consanguinity, which is, perhaps (at least after the first degree), rather an offence against the institutions of human prudence than a natural crime, is forbidden by their customs and punishable by fine:  yet the guilt is often expiated by a ceremony, and the marriages in many instances confirmed.

ADULTERY.

Adultery is punishable by fine; but the crime is rare, and suits on the subject still less frequent.  The husband, it is probable, either conceals his shame or revenges it with his own hand.

DIVORCES.