252 
POPULATION AND PLACES OF HABITATION, 
on the contrary that they speak the purely Malayan, without any 
mixture of Indostanee or Arabic: I will say nevertheless that those 
of them who are much in communication with Malays have admitted 
many words of these two last languages and even some of the Por¬ 
tuguese. They have also adopted several circumlocutions and ex¬ 
pressions used In the Malayan language of courtesy, as for instance, 
in addressing, the terms Abang, Kaka, but I remarked that they use 
such appellations and many other expressions of courtesy, received 
in Malay only when they are in the presence of Malays. The follow¬ 
ing answer given by the chiefs of the Jakuns of the Menangkabau 
states, who were summoned to the presence of king Mahomed Shah, 
may be considered as a specimen of their style and literature as 
well as explanatory of their manners and customs :* “We wish to 
return to our old customs, to ascend the lofty mountain, to dive into 
the earth’s deep caverns, to traverse the boundless forest, to repose, 
with our head pillowed on the knotted trunk of the Durian tree, and 
curtained by Russam leaves. To wear garments made from the 
leaves of the Lumbah or Terap tree, and a headdress of Bajah leaves. 
Where the Meranti trees join their lofty branches, where the kom- 
pas links its knots, there we love to sojourn. Our weapons are the 
tamiang (or sumpitan), and the quiver of arrows imbued in the gura 
of the deadly Telak. The fluid most delicious to us is the limpid 
water that lodges in the hollow of trees, where the branches unite 
with the trunk; and our food consists of the tender shoots of the 
fragrant Jematong, and the delicate flesh of the bounding deer.” 
The Jakuns are entirely ignorant of the first principles of ma¬ 
thematics, nor do they know the simplest rules of arithmetic. The 
mathematical instrument which probably gave origin to the decimal 
calculation, the natural indigitation, is adopted by them in ordina¬ 
ry use. 
* This passage, we suspect, should be received as a specimen of Lieuten¬ 
ant Newbold’s style of poetical prose. It is evidently a paraphrase by 
him of the original Malayan. Newbold’s Political and Statistical account 
of the British Settlements in the Straits of Malacca \ ol. II. p. 394. Ed. 
