a succession of men of abilities, or from the reputation for wisdom or valour of some ancestor.  Everyone has a regard to his race; and the probability of its being extinct is esteemed a great unhappiness.  This is what they call tungguan putus, and the expression is used by the lowest member of the community.  To have a wife, a family, collateral relations, and a settled place of residence is to have a tungguan, and this they are anxious to support and perpetuate.  It is with this view that, when a single female only remains of a family, they marry her by ambel anak; in which mode the husband’s consequence is lost in the wife’s, and in her children the tungguan of her father is continued.  They find her a husband that will menegga tungguan, or, as it is expressed amongst the Rejangs menegga rumah, set up the house again.

The semando marriage is little known in Passummah.  I recollect that a pangeran of Manna, having lost a son by a marriage of this kind with a Malay woman, she refused upon the father’s death to let the boy succeed to his dignities, and at the same time become answerable for his debts, and carried him with her from the country; which was productive of much confusion.  The regulations there in respect to incontinence have much severity, and fall particularly hard on the girl’s father, who not only has his daughter spoiled but must also pay largely for her frailty.  To the northward the offence is not punished with so much rigour, yet the instances are there said to be rarer, and marriage is more usually the consequence.  In other respects the customs of Passummah and Rejang are the same in these matters.

RITES OF MARRIAGE.

The rites of marriage, nikah (from the Arabian), consist simply in joining the hands of the parties and pronouncing them man and wife, without much ceremony excepting the entertainment which is given on the occasion.  This is performed by one of the fathers or the chief of the dusun, according to the original customs of the country; but where Mahometanism has found its way, a priest or imam executes the business.

COURTSHIP.

But little apparent courtship precedes their marriages.  Their manners do not admit of it, the bujang and gadis (youth of each sex) being carefully kept asunder, and the latter seldom trusted from under the wing of their mothers.  Besides, courtship with us includes the idea of humble entreaty on the man’s side, and favour and condescension on the part of the woman, who bestows person and property for love.  The Sumatran on the contrary, when he fixes his choice and pays all that he is worth for the object of it, may naturally consider the obligation on his side.  But still they are not without gallantry.  They preserve a degree of delicacy and respect towards the sex, which might justify their retorting on many of the polished nations of antiquity the epithet of barbarians.  The opportunities which the young people have of seeing and conversing with each other