Their books (and such they may with propriety be termed) are composed of the inner bark of a certain tree cut into long slips and folded in squares, leaving part of the wood at each extremity to serve for the outer covering.  The bark for this purpose is shaved smooth and thin, and afterwards rubbed over with rice-water.  The pen they use is a twig or the fibre of a leaf, and their ink is made of the soot of dammar mixed with the juice of the sugar-cane.  The contents of their books are little known to us.  The writing of most of those in my possession is mixed with uncouth representations of scolopendra and other noxious animals, and frequent diagrams, which imply their being works of astrology and divination.  These they are known to consult in all the transactions of life, and the event is predicted by the application of certain characters marked on a slip of bamboo, to the lines of the sacred book, with which a comparison is made.  But this is not their only mode of divining.  Before going to war they kill a buffalo or a fowl that is perfectly white, and by observing the motion of the intestines judge of the good or ill fortune likely to attend them; and the priest who performs this ceremony had need to be infallible, for if he predicts contrary to the event it is said that he is sometimes punished with death for his want of skill.  Exclusively however of these books of necromancy there are others containing legendary and mythological tales, of which latter a sample will be given under the article of religion.

REMARK BY DR. LEYDEN.

Dr. Leyden, in his Dissertation on the Languages and Literature of the Indo-Chinese nations, says that the Batta character is written neither from right to left, nor from left to right, nor from top to bottom, but in a manner directly opposite to that of the Chinese, from the bottom to the top of the line, and that I have conveyed an erroneous idea of their natural form by arranging the characters horizontally instead of placing them in a perpendicular line.  Not having now the opportunity of verifying by ocular proof what I understood to be the practical order of their writing, namely, from left to right (in the manner of the Hindus, who, there is reason to believe, were the original instructors of all these people), I shall only observe that I have among my papers three distinct specimens of the Batta alphabet, written by different natives at different periods, and all of them are horizontal.  But I am at the same time aware that as this was performed in the presence of Europeans, and upon our paper, they might have deviated from their ordinary practice, and that the evidence is therefore not conclusive.  It might be presumed indeed that the books themselves would be sufficient criterion; but according to the position in which they are held they may be made to sanction either mode, although it is easy to determine by simple inspection the commencement of the lines.  In the Batavian Transactions (Volume 3 page 23) already so often quoted, it is expressly said that these people write like Europeans from the left hand towards the right:  and in truth it is not easy to conceive how persons making use of ink can conduct the hand from the bottom to the top of a page without marring their own performance.  But still a matter of fact, if such it be, cannot give way to argument, and I have no object but to ascertain the truth.