Sill THOMAS STAMFORD RAFFLES. 
47 
writes Sir Statu ford, “I was prepared to find a coun- 
try still more fertile and populous titan the fertile 
valley of Passumah. The whole occupied hy the 
Tigas-blaa-cotas, or thirteen confederate towns, is 
one sheet of cultivation, in breadth about ten, in 
length twenty, miles, thickly studded with towns 
and villages. On the slopes of the hills, the principal 
cultivation is coffee, indigo, maize, sugar-cane, and 
oil-giving plants ; on the plain below, exclusively rice. 
A fine breed of small cattle, which seems peculiar, 
abounds here, and throughout the Menangkabu coun- 
try ; oxen seem generally used in agriculture, in pre- 
ference to buffaloes ; they are in general about three 
feet four inches high, beautifully made, and mostly of 
a light fawn colour, with black eyes and lashes, and 
are sold at from three to four dollars a head. They 
are, without exception, the most beautiful little ani- 
mals of the kind 1 ever beheld ; we did not see one 
in bad condition. Horses, of which there seems to 
be plenty, are not much used. For a mare ami foal, 
the price was about twenty shillings.” 
Thus they travelled on through a country little 
known to Europeans, of the most important and in- 
teresting description, full of interest to the antiquary 
and naturalist, — the classic ground of the Malays. 
On the night of the 2 1st, they reached the banks of 
Danau, orjake of Sincara, a beautiful sheet of wa- 
ter about fourteen miles tong, and seven broad, sur- 
rounded with mountains and hills, highly cultivated 
at the bases, and open only towards the Tiga-blas 
