by this policy and save his gunpowder.  It must be observed that the Malays are in general extremely fond of the parade of firing guns, which they never neglect on high days, and on the appearance of the new moon, particularly that which marks the commencement and the conclusion of their puasa or annual fast.  Yellow being esteemed, as in China, the royal colour, is said to be constantly and exclusively worn by the sultan and his household.  His usual present on sending an embassy (for no Sumatran or other oriental has an idea of making a formal address on any occasion without a present in hand, be it never so trifling), is a pair of white horses; being emblematic of the purity of his character and intentions.

CONVERSION TO MAHOMETAN RELIGION.

The immediate subjects of this empire, properly denominated Malays, are all of the Mahometan religion, and in that respect distinguished from the generality of inland inhabitants.  How it has happened that the most central people of the island should have become the most perfectly converted is difficult to account for unless we suppose that its political importance and the richness of its gold trade might have drawn thither its pious instructors, from temporal as well as spiritual motives.  Be this as it may, the country of Menangkabau is regarded as the supreme seat of civil and religious authority in this part of the East, and next to a voyage to Mecca to have visited its metropolis stamps a man learned, and confers the character of superior sanctity.  Accordingly the most eminent of those who bear the titles of imam, mulana, khatib, and pandita either proceed from thence or repair thither for their degree, and bring away with them a certificate or diploma from the sultan or his minister.

In attempting to ascertain the period of this conversion much accuracy is not to be expected; the natives are either ignorant on the subject or have not communicated their knowledge, and we can only approximate the truth by comparing the authorities of different old writers.  Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller who visited Sumatra under the name of Java minor (see above) says that the inhabitants of the seashore were addicted to the Mahometan law, which they had learned from Saracon merchants.  This must have been about the year 1290, when, in his voyage from China, he was detained for several months at a port in the Straits, waiting the change of the monsoon; and though I am scrupulous of insisting upon his authority (questioned as it is), yet in a fact of this nature he could scarcely be mistaken, and the assertion corresponds with the annals of the princes of Malacca, which state, as we have seen above, that sultan Muhammed Shah, who reigned from 1276 to 1333, was the first royal convert.  Juan De Barros, a Portuguese historian of great industry, says that, according to the tradition of the inhabitants, the city of Malacca was founded about the year 1260, and that about 1400 the Mahometan faith had spread