3l6 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1778- 



This paper contains extracts of several letters from Mr. Charles Miller (son of 

 the late botanic gardener) now settled at Fort Malbro' near Bencoolen ; giving 

 some account of that place, also of the interior parts of Sumatra, and of a 

 neighbouring island never known to have been visited by any European. 



The houses at Fort Marlbrough, near Bencoolen, are almost all built, ceiled, 

 roofed, and floored, with a kind of reed called bamboo, and thatched with the 

 leaves of the sago-tree, and would all be called cottages in England, making a 

 very mean appearance. They are placed in no kind of order ; most of them are 

 raised from the ground on wooden or brick pillars 6 or 8 feet high ; within they 

 are not much unlike a set of rooms in a college, as they consist of one large 

 room called a hall, out of which two doors lead, the one to a bed-room, and the 

 other to an office or study. The climate is far from being so disagreeably hot as 

 it is represented to be, or as one might expect from our vicinity to the line; the 

 thermometer is never lower in a morning at 6 than 6g°, or higher than 76°. At 

 noon it varies from 79° to 88" ; and at eight p. m. from 73° to 78° or 80°. 



The people who inhabit the coast are Malays, who came hither from the pe- - 

 ninsula of Malacca : but the interior parts are inhabited by a very different 

 people, and who have hitherto had no connection with the Europeans. Their 

 language and character differ much from those of the Malays ; the latter using 

 the Arabic character ; and all the interior nations, though they differ from each 

 other in language, use the same character. The people between the districts of 

 the English company, and thosfe of the Dutch at Palimbau on the other side the 

 island, write on long narrow slips of the bark of a tree, with a piece of bamboo, 

 they begin at the bottom, and write from the left hand to the right, which I 

 think is contrary to the custom of all other eastern nations. This country is 

 very hilly, and the access to it exceedingly difficult, there being no possibility of 

 a horse going over the hills. The inhabitants have almost all of them, particu- 

 larly the women, large swellings in the throat, some nearly as large as a man's 

 head, but in general as large as an ostrich's egg, like the goitres of the Alps. 

 It is by them said to be owing to their drinking a cold white water ; probably 

 some mineral water. Near their country is a volcano : it is very mountainous, 

 and abounds with sulphur. If this distemper be produced here by this cause, 

 perhaps in the Alpine countries it may take its origin from a similar one, and 

 not, as has been imagined, from snow-water : certain it is, there is no snow 

 here to occasion it. In almost all the central parts from Moco-inoco northwards, 

 they find gold, and some iron ; but this distemper is unknown there. Mr. M. 

 met here with a rivulet of a strong sulphurated water, which was so hot, a quarter 

 of a mile below its source, that he could not walk across it. 



The country called the Cassia country lies in latitude 1° north inland of our 

 settlement of Tappanooly : it is well inhabited by a people called Battas, who 



