224 JACK'S LETTERS TO WA'LLICH, 1819-1821. 



Nias on the 14th of Nov. and commenced the business. The ob- 

 ject was to get the cession of the whole island to the Company in 

 full sovereignty, and as it is held by a great number of inde- 

 pendent chiefs, the necessary negotiations occupied a long time. 

 We visited every port on the Eastern and Southern sides of the 

 Island, and succeeded in effecting almost every point. Tello 

 Dalam, a fine harbour to the Southward has been selected as our 

 station, and the whole Island is a British possession. It is alto- 

 gether one of the richest, finest countries I have ever seen, culti- 

 vated almost too highly for a botanist, and populous as many 

 parts of India. It has long been a great mart of slaves, furnish- 

 ing not less than 150<> a year. The abolition of this trade formed 

 one of our great objects, and it too is in the best train possible. 

 The people are pagans, and a very original race differing from all 

 their neighbours, and display a mixture of barbarism and civi- 

 lization that makes them very interesting. On seeing a parcel of 

 half naked savages, armed with spears and wooden shields, their 

 physiognomies rendered horrible by helmets and artificial beards 

 of long black Ijau, 265 striking up a Avar dance, with violent howl- 

 ing and gesticulations, you could fancy yourself transported to 

 the Otaheiti, or some such South sea Island, while on the other 

 hand on seeing their villages, their houses, the style of comfort, 

 and I might say elegance in which they live, one is tempted to 

 give them a superiority over almost every other Eastern race. 

 Their houses are so substantial and well constructed, that a Euro- 

 pean might live in them with comfort; their villages are built in 

 most picturesque situations upon the pinnacles of the hills for 

 defence, but the ascent is facilitated by noble flights of stone steps, 

 and paved roads are sometimes carried on to the distance of some 

 miles, shaded too on each side by rows of fruit trees. The sur- 

 face of the country is very uneven, but this only makes it more 

 beautiful to the eye. as the sides of the hills are cultivated up to 

 the very summits and there is a sufficiency of wood to give a 

 picturesque variety, without passing into the dull uniformity which 

 unbroken and primaeval forests always produce. 



The principal export of the country is rice, an article of 

 which there is a woeful deficiency in all our Sumatran territories, 

 and which makes the possession of a granary like Pulo Xias an 

 object of importance. Notwithstanding all these advantages and 

 temptations to an intercourse with this island, I believe it is less 

 known in all respects than Otaheiti. Its Geography is almost a 

 blank further than that an island called Pulo Xias exists in such 

 a latitude, and the people have only been known by the great value 

 set upon them as slaves, in which capacity they are highly esteemed 

 throughout the Archipelago. But as to the population, the nature 

 and resources of the island, nothing is known : Marsden devotes, I 

 think, a page to it. — I have as you may suppose, besides the official 



265. Ijau is Ijok = fibre of Arenga saccharifera. 



Jour. Straits Branch 



