DESTROYED. ENTER KOTO BHARU.

March 1st.  After completely destroying Koto Tuggoh we marched in a north and afterwards an east direction, and arrived at Koto Bharu.  The head dupati requesting a parley, it was granted, and, on our promising not to injure his village, he allowed us to take possession of it.  We found in the place a number of Batang Asei and other people, armed with muskets, blunderbusses, and spears.  At our desire, he sent off people to the other Sungei-tenang villages to summon their chiefs to meet us if they chose to show themselves friends, or otherwise we should proceed against them as we had done against Koto Tuggoh.

PEACE CONCLUDED.

This dupati was a respectable-looking old man, and tears trickled down his cheeks when matters were amicably settled between us:  indeed for some time he could hardly be convinced of it, and repeatedly asked, “Are we friends?” 2nd.  The chiefs met as desired, and after a short conversation agreed to all that we proposed.  Papers were thereupon drawn up and signed and sworn to under the British colours.  After this a shell was thrown into the air at the request of the chiefs, who were desirous of witnessing the sight.

MODE OF TAKING AN OATH.

Their method of swearing was as follows:  The young shoots of the anau-tree were made into a kind of rope, with the leaves hanging, and this was attached to four stakes stuck in the ground, forming an area of five or six feet square, within which a mat was spread, where those about to take the oath seated themselves.  A small branch of the prickly bamboo was planted in the area also, and benzoin was kept burning during the ceremony.  The chiefs then laid their hands on the koran, held to them by a priest, and one of them repeated to the rest the substance of the oath, who, at the pauses he made, gave a nod of assent; after which they severally said, “may the earth become barren, the air and water poisonous, and may dreadful calamities fall on us and our posterity, if we do not fulfil what we now agree to and promise.”

ACCOUNT OF SUNGEI-TENANG COUNTRY.

We met here with little or no fruit excepting plantains and pineapples, and these of an indifferent sort.  The general produce of the country was maize, padi, potatoes, sweet-potatoes, tobacco, and sugar-cane.  The principal part of their clothing was procured from the eastern side of the island.  They appear to have no regular season for sowing the grain, and we saw plantations where in one part they had taken in the crop, in another part it was nearly ripe, in a third not above five inches high, and in a fourth they had but just prepared the ground for sowing.  Upon the whole, there appeared more cultivation than near the coast.

MANNERS OF PEOPLE.