It is a practice with many individuals among these people (as with mountaineers in some parts of Europe) to leave their country in order to seek employment where they can find it, and at the end of three or four years revisit their native soil, bringing with them the produce of their labours.  If they happen to be successful they become itinerant merchants, and travel to almost all parts of the island, particularly where fairs are held, or else purchase a matchlock gun and become soldiers of fortune, hiring themselves to whoever will pay them, but always ready to come forward in defence of their country and families.  They are a thick stout dark race of people, something resembling the Achinese; and in general they are addicted to smoking opium.  We had no opportunity of seeing the Sungei-tenang women.  The men are very fantastical in their dress.  Their bajus have the sleeves blue perhaps whilst the body is white, with stripes of red or any other colour over the shoulders, and their short breeches are generally one half blue and the other white, just as fancy leads them.  Others again are dressed entirely in blue cotton cloth, the same as the inhabitants of the west coast.  The bag containing their sirih or betel hangs over the shoulder by a string, if it may be so termed, of brass wire.  Many of them have also twisted brass wire round the waist, in which they stick their krises.

CHARMS.

They commonly carry charms about their persons to preserve them from accidents; one of which was shown to us, printed (at Batavia or Samarang in Java) in Dutch, Portuguese, and French.  It purported that the writer was acquainted with the occult sciences, and that whoever possessed one of the papers impressed with his mark (which was the figure of a hand with the thumb and fingers extended) was invulnerable and free from all kinds of harm.  It desired the people to be very cautious of taking any such printed in London (where certainly none were ever printed), as the English would endeavour to counterfeit them and to impose on the purchasers, being all cheats. (Whether we consider this as a political or a mercantile speculation it is not a little extraordinary and ridiculous).  The houses here, as well as in the Serampei country, are all built on posts of what they call paku gajah (elephant-fern, Chamaerops palma, Lour.), a tree something resembling a fern, and when full-grown a palm-tree.  It is of a fibrous nature, black, and lasts for a great length of time.  Every dusun has a ballei or town hall, about a hundred and twenty feet long and proportionably broad, the woodwork of which is neatly carved.  The dwelling-houses contain five, six, or seven families each, and the country is populous.  The inhabitants both of Sungei-tenang and Serampei are Mahometans, and acknowledge themselves subjects of Jambi.  The former country, so well as we were able to ascertain, is bounded on the north and north-west by Korinchi and Serampei, on the west and south-west by the Anak-sungei or Moco-moco and Ipu districts, on the south by Labun, and on the east by Batang Asei and Pakalang-jambu. 3rd.  Marched on our return to the coast, many of the principal people attending us as far as the last of their plantations.  It rained hard almost the whole of this day.