At the age of about eight or nine they bore the ears and file the teeth of the female children; which are ceremonies that must necessarily precede their marriage.  The former they call betende, and the latter bedabong; and these operations are regarded in the family as the occasion of a festival.  They do not here, as in some of the adjacent islands (of Nias in particular), increase the aperture of the ear to a monstrous size, so as in many instances to be large enough to admit the hand, the lower parts being stretched till they touch the shoulders.  Their earrings are mostly of gold filigree, and fastened not with a clasp, but in the manner of a rivet or nut screwed to the inner part.

CHAPTER 3.

VILLAGES.  BUILDINGS.  DOMESTIC UTENSILS.  FOOD.

I shall now attempt a description of the villages and buildings of the Sumatrans, and proceed to their domestic habits of economy, and those simple arts on which the procuring of their food and other necessaries depends.  These are not among the least interesting objects of philosophical speculation.  In proportion as the arts in use with any people are connected with the primary demands of nature, they carry the greater likelihood of originality, because those demands must have been administered to from a period coeval with the existence of the people themselves.  Or if complete originality be regarded as a visionary idea, engendered from ignorance and the obscurity of remote events, such arts must be allowed to have the fairest claim to antiquity at least.  Arts of accommodation, and more especially of luxury, are commonly the effect of imitation, and suggested by the improvements of other nations which have made greater advances towards civilisation.  These afford less striking and characteristic features in delineating the picture of mankind, and, though they may add to the beauty, diminish from the genuineness of the piece.  We must not look for unequivocal generic marks, where the breed, in order to mend it, has been crossed by a foreign mixture.  All the arts of primary necessity are comprehended within two distinctions:  those which protect us from the inclemency of the weather and other outward accidents; and those which are employed in securing the means of subsistence.  Both are immediately essential to the continuance of life, and man is involuntarily and immediately prompted to exercise them by the urgent calls of nature, even in the merest possible state of savage and uncultivated existence.  In climates like that of Sumatra this impulse extends not far.  The human machine is kept going with small effort in so favourable a medium.  The spring of importunate necessity there soon loses its force, and consequently the wheels of invention that depend upon it fail to perform more than a few simple revolutions.  In regions less mild this original motive to industry and ingenuity carries men to greater lengths in the application of arts to the