(Footnote.  In the course of my inquiries amongst the natives concerning the aborigines of the island I have been informed of two different species of people dispersed in the woods and avoiding all communication with the other inhabitants.  These they call Orang Kubu and Orang Gugu.  The former are said to be pretty numerous, especially in that part of the country which lies between Palembang and Jambi.  Some have at times been caught and kept as slaves in Labun; and a man of that place is now married to a tolerably handsome Kubu girl who was carried off by a party that discovered their huts.  They have a language quite peculiar to themselves, and they eat promiscuously whatever the woods afford, as deer, elephant, rhinoceros, wild hog, snakes, or monkeys.  The Gugu are much scarcer than these, differing in little but the use of speech from the Orang Utan of Borneo; their bodies being covered with long hair.  There have not been above two or three instances of their being met with by the people of Labun (from whom my information is derived) and one of these was entrapped many years ago in much the same manner as the carpenter in Pilpay’s Fables caught the monkey.  He had children by a Labun woman which also were more hairy than the common race; but the third generation are not to be distinguished from others.  The reader will bestow what measure of faith he thinks due to this relation, the veracity of which I do not pretend to vouch for.  It has probably some foundation in truth but is exaggerated in the circumstances.)

Menangkabau being the principal sovereignty of the island, which formerly comprehended the whole, and still receives a shadow of homage from the most powerful of the other kingdoms which have sprung up from its ruins, would seem to claim a right to precedence in description, but I have a sufficient reason for deferring it to a subsequent part of the work; which is that the people of this empire, by their conversion to Mahometanism and consequent change of manners, have lost in a greater degree than some neighbouring tribes the genuine Sumatran character, which is the immediate object of my investigation.

MALAYS.

They are distinguished from the other inhabitants of this island by the appellation of Orang Malayo, or Malays, which however they have in common with those of the coast of the Peninsula and of many other islands; and the name is applied to every Mussulman speaking the Malayan as his proper language, and either belonging to, or claiming descent from, the ancient kingdom of Menangkabau; wherever the place of his residence may be.  Beyond Bencoolen to the southward there are none to be met with excepting such as have been drawn thither by, and are in the pay of, Europeans.  On the eastern side of the island they are settled at the entrance of almost all the navigable rivers, where they more conveniently indulge their habitual bent for trade and piracy.  It must be observed indeed that in common speech the term Malay, like