occasions of life; and these of course in an equal space of time attain to greater perfection than among the inhabitants of the tropical latitudes, who find their immediate wants supplied with facility, and prefer the negative pleasure of inaction to the enjoyment of any conveniences that are to be purchased with exertion and labour.  This consideration may perhaps tend to reconcile the high antiquity universally allowed to Asiatic nations, with the limited progress of arts and sciences among them; in which they are manifestly surpassed by people who compared with them are but of very recent date.

The Sumatrans however in the construction of their habitations have stepped many degrees beyond those rude contrivances which writers describe the inhabitants of some other Indian countries to have been contented with adopting in order to screen themselves from the immediate influence of surrounding elements.  Their houses are not only permanent but convenient, and are built in the vicinity of each other that they may enjoy the advantages of mutual assistance and protection resulting from a state of society.*

(Footnote.  In several of the small islands near Sumatra (including the Nicobars), whose inhabitants in general are in a very low state of civilisation, the houses are built circularly.  Vid Asiatic Researches volume 4 page 129 plate.)

VILLAGES.

The dusuns or villages (for the small number of inhabitants assembled in each does not entitle them to the appellations of towns) are always situated on the banks of a river or lake for the convenience of bathing and of transporting goods.  An eminence difficult of ascent is usually made choice of for security.  The access to them is by footways, narrow and winding, of which there are seldom more than two; one to the country and the other to the water; the latter in most places so steep as to render it necessary to cut steps in the cliff or rock.  The dusuns, being surrounded with abundance of fruit-trees, some of considerable height, as the durian, coco, and betel-nut, and the neighbouring country for a little space about being in some degree cleared of wood for the rice and pepper plantations, these villages strike the eye at a distance as clumps merely, exhibiting no appearance of a town or any place of habitation.  The rows of houses form commonly a quadrangle, with passages or lanes at intervals between the buildings, where in the more considerable villages live the lower class of inhabitants, and where also their padi-houses or granaries are erected.  In the middle of the square stands the balei or town hall, a room about fifty to a hundred feet long and twenty or thirty wide, without division, and open at the sides, excepting when on particular occasions it is hung with mats or chintz; but sheltered in a lateral direction by the deep overhanging roof.

(PLATE 19.  A VILLAGE HOUSE IN SUMATRA. 
W. Bell delt.  J.G.  Stadler sculpt. 
Published by W. Marsden, 1810.