RECEPTION OF STRANGERS.

Abundantly more ceremony is used among these people at interviews with strangers than takes place in the countries adjacent to them.  Not only the chief person of a party travelling, but every one of his attendants, is obliged, upon arriving at a town, to give a formal account of their business, or occasion of coming that way.  When the principal man of the dusun is acquainted by the stranger with the motives of his journey he repeats his speech at full length before he gives an answer; and if it is a person of great consequence, the words must pass through two or three mouths before they are supposed to come with sufficient ceremony to his ears.  This in fact has more the air of adding to his own importance and dignity than to that of the guest; but it is not in Sumatra alone that respect is manifested by this seeming contradiction.

The terms of the jujur, or equivalent for wives, is the same here, nearly, as with the Rejangs.  The kris-head is not essential to the bargain, as among the people of Passummah.  The father of the girl never admits of the putus tali kulo, or whole sum being paid, and thereby withholds from the husband, in any case, the right of selling his wife, who, in the event of a divorce, returns to her relations.  Where the putus tali is allowed to take place, he has a property in her, little differing from that of a slave, as formerly observed.  The particular sums which constitute the jujur are less complex here than at other places.  The value of the maiden’s golden trinkets is nicely estimated, and her jujur regulated according to that and the rank of her parents.  The semando marriage scarcely ever takes place but among poor people, where there is no property on either side, or in the case of a slip in the conduct of the female, when the friends are glad to make up a match in this way instead of demanding a price for her.  Instances have occurred however of countrymen of rank affecting a semando marriage in order to imitate the Malayan manners; but it has been looked upon as improper and liable to create confusion.

The fines and compensation for murder are in every respect the same as in the countries already described.

RELIGION.

The Mahometan religion has made considerable progress amongst the Lampongs, and most of their villages have mosques in them:  yet an attachment to the original superstitions of the country induces them to regard with particular veneration the ancient burying-places of their fathers, which they piously adorn and cover in from the weather.

SUPERSTITIOUS OPINIONS.

In some parts, likewise, they superstitiously believe that certain trees, particularly those of a venerable appearance (as an old jawi-jawi or banyan tree) are the residence, or rather the material frame of spirits of the woods; an opinion which exactly answers to the idea entertained by the ancients of the dryads and hamadryads.  At Benkunat in the Lampong country there is a long stone, standing on a flat one, supposed by the people to possess extraordinary power or virtue.  It is reported to have been once thrown down into the water and to have raised itself again to its original position, agitating the elements at the same time with a prodigious storm.  To approach it without respect they believe to be the source of misfortune to the offender.