SIR THOMAS STAMTORH RAFFLES. 
47 
writes Sir Stamford, “ I was prepared to find a coun- 
try still more fertile and populous than the fertile 
valley of Passumah. The whole occupied by the 
Tigas-blas-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 jthe hills, the principal 
cultivation is coffee, indigo, maize, sugar-cane, and 
oil-giving plants ; on the plain below, exclusively rice. 
A fine bi-eed 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 o' 
a light fawn colour, with black eyes and lashes, and 
arp sold at from three to four dollai's a- head. They 
are, without exception, the most beautiful little ani- 
mals of the kind I ever beheld ; we did not see one 
m bad condition. Homes, of which there seems to 
be plenty, ai'e not much used. For a mare and 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 21st, they reached the banks of 
Danau, or lake of Sincara, a beautiful sheet of wa- 
ter about fourteen miles long, and seven broad, sur- 
rounded with mountains and bills, highly cultivated 
at the bases, and open only towards the Tiga-blas 
