the  IJland  of  Sumatra.  167 
the  woman  becomes  the  Have  of  her  hufband,  and  is 
rendered  infamous  by  cutting  off  her  hair.  Public  theft 
is  alfo  punifhed  with  death,  and  the  body  eaten.  All 
their  wives  live  in  the  fame  houfe  with  the  hufband,  and 
the  houfes  have  no  partition;  but  each  wife  has  her 
feparate  fire-place. 
Girls  and  unmarried  women  wear  fix  or  eight  large 
rings  of  thick  brafs  wire  about  their  neck,  and  great 
numbers  of  tin  rings  in  their  ears;  but  all  thefe  orna- 
ments are  laid  afide  when  they  marry. 
They  often  preferve  the  dead  bodies  of  their  Radjas 
(by  which  name  they  call  every  freeman  that  has  pro- 
perty, of  which  there  are  fometimes  one,  fometimes 
more,  in  one  Compong,  and  the  reft  are  vaffals)  for  three 
months  and  upwards  before  they  bury  them : this  they 
continue  to  do  by  putting  the  body  into  a coffin  well 
caulked  with  dammar  (a  kind  of  rezin)  : they  place  the 
coffin  in  the  upper  part  of  the  houfe,  and  having  made  a 
hole  at  the  bottom,  fit  thereto  a piece  of  bamboo,  which 
reaches  quite  through  the  houfe,  and  three  or  four  feet 
into  the  ground:  this  ferves  to  convey  all  putrid  moif- 
ture  from  the  corpfe  without  occafioning  any  fmell. 
They  feem  to  have  great  ceremonies  at  thefe  funerals ; 
but  they  would  not  allow  me  to  fee  them.  I faw  feveral 
figures  dreffed  up  like  men,  and  heard  a kind  of  linging 
2 and 
