334 
REPORT ON THE ISLAND OF BANKA, 
harvest, are employed in barter with the neighbouring Chinese for 
various trifling articles of luxury, rather than for their o^Vn consump¬ 
tion : like most other savages they are limited to a single species of 
nutriment. 
The most common and useful domestic fruits and trees are never 
found among the mountain-people, except at the villages above- 
mentioned where several kinds have lately been planted. Many of 
the natives are unacquainted with the method of opening a cocoa- 
nut for the purpose of obtaining the fluid it contains. The only 
fruit tree which is sometimes found near their ladangs, as well as in 
solitary parts of the forest, is the Champedak, a species of Artocar- 
pus or bread fruit: This tree, which grows to a very large size, is 
' often planted by the natives, agreeably to an old eastern custom, as 
a legacy (pusaka) for their posterity, in the expectation that at a fu¬ 
ture period their children or grand children may clear a plantation 
on the same spot and discover the trees their ancestors have bequea¬ 
thed to them. 
The inhabitants of Banka present on first acquaintance various 
good qualities, which must however be appreciated with regard to 
circumstances before their character is too favorably delineated. 
Theft and robbery are scarcely known among those of the northern 
portions of the island ; gambling, intoxication, adultery and similar 
vices are equally uncommon *, but the smallness of their community, 
the separation in which they live, and their general poverty withhold 
as well the incitements as the opportunities for vice. 
Although they profess externally the Mahomedan religion, they 
have retained many of their ancient superstitions. They have a pe¬ 
culiar veneration for the forests which cover the island as the source 
from which they chiefly draw their nourishment. Every portion of 
a forest is in their opinion subjected to a spirit or inferior deity, 
and they never cut a tree, in laying out a new rice ground, without 
soliciting, by means of an offering, the assent of the particular di¬ 
vinity, that superintends the spot. By neglect of tills ceremony 
they infallibly expect to be visited by some severe domestic calamity. 
As the season approaches for attempting a new plantation, some Ben- 
