180 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[Febraary, 
in proportion to the means and arms he can get in his possession. 
Their chiefs are extremely jealous of each other, and never unite? 
except in common defence against some external enemy. The 
political relations between the rajahs and their vassals, are quite 
feudal in their character. Their standard, in war, is a horse's 
head, and their arms such as are used in other parts of the island. 
They fortify their villages by ramparts of earth ; together with 
ditches, brushwood, and palisades of camphire timber. 
They have priests among them who perform certain ceremo- 
nies on the occasion of burying the dead ; and their ideas of a 
Supreme Being and an hereafter, are more clearly manifested 
than among the Rejangs. The funeral obsequies of a deceased 
rajah, or any man of superior consequence, are performed with 
much ceremony, and months are consumed in their consum- 
mation. The corpse is deposited in a coffin of the anou-tree, 
which is covered with rosin, and from the end of which a bamboo 
tube extends into the ground, to carry off all disagreeable effluvia. 
When the coffin is brought out for burial, baskets of rice are 
placed by the women near the corpse, A buffalo or horse is then 
killed, and a feast takes place ; after which, the attending priest 
kills a fowl, and allows its blood to run upon the coffin, as a charm 
to drive away evil spirits. When the ceremonies and several 
other rites have been all strictly observed, the coffin is buried in 
the earth, and the people retire peaceably to their homes. 
The Battas, perhaps more than any other people in the northern 
part of the island, have preserved their original character, man- 
ners, habits, and customs, to the present day. 
The next and last nation of Sumatra which our prescribed 
limits will permit us to notice, is that of Acheen, at the northern 
extremity of the island ; a people to whom we have already so 
frequently alluded, that but little more remains to be said of them. 
It may here^ however, be observed in brief, that Acheen is the only 
kingdom on the island which ever reached such a state of political 
importance as to become a subject of general history. But at 
the period when the forces of this government drove the Portu- 
guese from the island, the extent of its territory was far greater 
than it is at present. The king then claimed dominion as far 
down on the western coast as Indrapoor, two degrees south of 
the equator; whereas his present jurisdiction only reaches to 
