Next to the Malays in number and, perhaps, equal to them in civilisation, are the
Achinese, with a population of 450,000, occupying 22,000 square miles, and giving 20
inhabitants to the square mile. This is the nation which is nearest to the continent
of India, which has held most intercourse and intermixed most with Asiatic strangers,
and which was the first in Sumatra to embrace the Mahommedan religion. After
this nation comes the Palembang, amounting to 201,000, occupying a territory of
13,400 square miles, which gives 15 inhabitants to each square mile. This people is
partly Javanese and partly Malay, and is equal in civilisation to the Malays and Achinese.
The Sarawi, a neighbouring nation to Palembang and an inland people, are
computed to amount to the number of 160,000, and to occupy an area of 4875 square
miles, which gives a relative population of 32 to the square mile. The number of the
Rejang nation is computed at 72,000, and the territory it occupies at 4500 miles,
giving 16 inhabitants to the square mile. This is the people among whom we planted
our black pepper settlement of Bencoolen; and who have been described so graphically
and so truthfully by Mr. Marsden, in his well-known History of Sumatra. They
are, notwithstanding, a small obscure people, who have made no figure even in the
local annals of Sumatra. The Lampung nation, occupying that part of Sumatra
which faces Java, is an equally small and obscure people. Their number is put
down at 92,000, and the territory they inhabit at 8280 square miles, giving 11 inhabitants
to each mile. The last of the civilised nations is the Batak, the occasional
cannibals who had invented what neither Aztecs nor Peruvians had done—phonetic
writing. Their number is set down at 311,860, occupying 15,800 square miles,
which gives nearly 20 inhabitants to the square mile. Mr. Logan makes the wild tribes
of the main island no more than 6000, which, as they are spread over a vast surface,
and as he has not included anywhere the inhabitants of the low islands of the
eastern coast, for the most part, of the same class, is probably under-estimating
them. He makes the population of the islands of the western coast 294,900, on an
area of 5040 square miles, giving 48 inhabitants to the square mile.
Prom these data, the total population of the main island is reckoned at 2,486,410,
or 19 inhabitants to the square mile, which is about one-fifteenth of the relative
population of Java. From these statements, which are, probably, as near approximations
to the truth as the nature of the subject would admit, it will appear that
the greater portion of the surface of Sumatra is what the best part of it is well
known to be, a sterile or intractable wilderness ; for in the rude state of society
which exists in the Malay Archipelago, it must never be lost sight of, that population
and civilisation are commensurate with fertility of soil, accompanied by adaptation of
the land to easy culture. This is tested by comparing Sumatra with Java, and Borneo
with the little islands of Bali and Lomboe; or even Sumatra itself with the sterile
and poorly-peopled Peninsula and Borneo. Even in comparing one part of Sumatra
with another, we are furnished with an illustration of the same fact. The Malays of
Menangkabo, inhabiting the volcanic valleys and plains of the interior of the mountain
region, the cradle of Malayan power and civilisation, have a relative population
of 128 to the square mile. On the western coast the same people amount only to 80
to the square mile; and in the great plain of the eastern coast, covered by unconquerable
forest, the rate falls to 20, and even to 5 to the square mile.
The agriculture of Sumatra differs in no respect from that of Java, except that it
i3 less skilful; and that, with few exceptions, it has to contend with an unfruitful
soil. The same corns, pulses, palms, and fruits are cultivated as in that island. In
the culture of black pepper and of the coco and areca palms only, it seems to excel
Java; for, for these plants, the poor soil of its coasts seems peculiarly adapted. A
country so extensive necessarily possesses a great variety of soils. Thus, the plains
and valleys of Menangkabo, situated among the mountains of the volcanic band, are
in fertility and capacity of perennial irrigation not, perhaps, inferior to the finest
provinces of Java; and Sir Stamford Raffles, who personally visited this part of the
island and was well acquainted with Java, asserts that the country was as extensively
cultivated and well-watered as the finest part of that island. This gifted portion of
Sumatra, however, constitutes evidently but a small part of its surface; and although,
no doubt, many other fertile spots exist, the best known parts of the island are
ascertained to be the reverse of fertile. Mr. Marsden’s account of the soil of such
parts of the western coast as he had an opportunity of observing, proves it, instead
of being fruitful, to be both sterile and stubborn. “ I cannot,” observes this faithful
writer, “ help saying, that I think the soil of the western coast of Sumatra is, in
general, rather sterile than rich. It is, for the most part, a stiff red clay, burnt nearly
to the state of a brick, where it is exposed to the influence of the sun. The small
nortion of the whole that is cultivated is either ground from which old woods have
been recently cleared, whose leaves had formed a bed of vegetable earth some inches
deep or else ravines into which the scanty mould of the adjoining hills has been
washed by the annual torrents of rain.”—History of Sumatra, p. 78. Even the land
of the neighbourhood of Bencoolen, to which this description more especially refers,
is fertile if compared to the plains of Pertibi, in the centre of the island, already
described. Many parts of the great alluvial plain of the eastern side of the island
have an abundantly fertile soil; but covered as they are by a mighty forest, and as
very probably they were before the creation of man, the labour of clearing and cultivating
them is as much beyond the power of the present race of inhabitants,
as that race would be to cover them with a net-work of railways. Sumatra would
certainly be a more valuable territory if it wanted this huge plain altogether.
Of the ancient history of Sumatra we know little ; and this is not to be wondered
at when we advert to the state of society, even of the most advanced of its nations,
—a state in which no reliable records have ever been preserved by any race of man.
The very little that we do know is derived, not from the people themselves, but from
the strangers that held intercourse with them, or from the evidence of language,
much in the same manner as we derive our knowledge of the ancient Britons, the
Gauls, and the Iberians. The people of Sumatra had certainly adopted a kind of
Hinduism, and this is sufficiently attested by an examination of their languages,
and even by a few monuments and inscriptions. The more civilised nations of-Java
seem, also, to have mixed with the Sumatrans, and to have had a considerable share
in the formation of their manners. This is shown by the existence, even to the pre- '
sent time, of the Javanese language in Palembang,—by inscriptions in Menangkabo in
the ancient character of Java,—and by many purely Javanese names of places in both
the countries thus named. What De Barros says on this subject is worth quoting,
since his information could only be derived from the natives themselves; and since
he wrote by three centuries nearer the events than our times. “ The people of the
coast, as well as of the interior of the island, are all of a yellowish-brown colour
(ba<;o),—having flowing hair,—are well-made,—of a goodly aspect, and do not resemble
the Javanese, although so near to them, a fact which shows how a small distance may
alter the forms of nature. And this is the more remarkable, since all the natives of
Sumatra are called by the common name of Jauij (Jawi) ; for it is held by themselves
as certain, that the Javanese had been once masters of this great island, and that
before the Chijs (Chinese), they conducted its commerce as well as that of India.”—
Decade in. Book v. Chap. 1. The inference of a Javanese connection with the word
Jauij, as it is written by De Barros, but correctly Jawi, is most probably a mistake;
for it is a common term applied by the Arabs to all the natives of the Archipelago,
but more especially to the Malays; although, no doubt, it is a corruption of the word
Jawa, Java, or Javanese.
The most remarkable event in the history of the people of Sumatra is the conversion
of the most civilised of them to the Mahommedan religion, but even this is not
correctly determined. De Barros states that the conversion took place about 150
years before the arrival of the Portuguese, which would carry us back, only to about
the year 1360. Marco Polo, however, found the people of the eastern side of the island
already Mahommedans, about 1290, or 70 years earlier than the time specified by
De Barros. The account which this last author gives of the manner in which the
conversion was effected, has every appearance of verisimilitude, and is worth extracting.
“ The inhabitants of the coast,” says he, “ follow the sect of Mahomet. The
princes of the maritime ports were originally Moors, Persians, Arabs, Moors of the
kingdoms of Gujrat, India (Southern), and Bengal, who, in pursuit of trade, came to
the ports of this country. These men observing the state of the country, its great
extent,-—that the inhabitants were without law, and well disposed^ to receive
their own religion,—they converted many of them, took their daughters in marriage,
making themselves masters of the country, and in time assuming the title of kings.
—Decade ill. Book viii. Chap. 1.
The attempts of the Portuguese to establish their power in Sumatra, were
productive only of petty wars and massacres, and never had the least prospect of
success, nor are they worth narrating, affording only evidence of fanaticism
and bootless courage. The Dutch and English petty establishments had only ^ in
view the paltry object of monopolising blaek-pepper, a mean and profitless one, which
they both pursued with much assiduity for two whole centuries. I t was not until
the restoration of thefr possessions in the Archipelago to the Dutch in 1816, and,
especially, since the convention with the English in 1824, that the government of the
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