The History of Sumatra Part 3

Where the encroachments of the sea have undermined the land the cliffs are left abrupt and naked, in some places to a very considerable height.

In these many curious fossils are discovered, such as petrified wood, and seash.e.l.ls of various sorts. Hypotheses on this subject have been so ably supported and so powerfully attacked that I shall not presume to intrude myself in the lists. I shall only observe that, being so near the sea, many would hesitate to allow such discoveries to be of any weight in proving a violent alteration to have taken place in the surface of the terraqueous globe; whilst, on the other hand, it is unaccountable how, in the common course of natural events, such extraneous matter should come to be lodged in strata at the height perhaps of fifty feet above the level of the water, and as many below the surface of the land.

COLOURED EARTHS.

Here are likewise found various species of earths which might be applied to valuable purposes, as painters' colours, and otherwise. The most common are the yellow and red, probably ochres, and the white, which answers the description of the milenum of the ancients.

VOLCANOES.

There are a number of volcano mountains in this, as in almost all the other islands of the eastern Archipelago. They are called in the Malay language gunong-api, or more correctly, gunong ber-api. Lava has been seen to flow from a considerable one near Priamang; but I have never heard of its causing any other damage than the burning of woods. This however may be owing to the thinness of population, which does not render it necessary for the inhabitants to settle in a situation that exposes them to danger of this kind. The only volcano I had an opportunity of observing opened in the side of a mountain, about twenty miles inland of Bencoolen, one-fourth way from its top, as nearly as I can judge. It scarcely ever failed to emit smoke; but the column was only visible for two or three hours in the morning, seldom rising and preserving its form, above the upper edge of the hill, which is not of a conical shape but extending with a gradual slope.

EARTHQUAKES.

The high trees with which the country thereabout is covered, prevent the crater from being discernible at a distance; and this proves that the spot is not considerably raised or otherwise affected by the earthquakes which are very frequently felt there. Sometimes it has emitted smoke upon these occasions, and in other instances not. Yet during a smart earthquake which happened a few years before my arrival it was remarked to send forth flame, which it is rarely known to do.* The apprehension of the European inhabitants however is rather more excited when it continues any length of time without a tendency to an eruption, as they conceive it to be the vent by which the inflammable matter escapes that would otherwise produce these commotions of the earth. Comparatively with the descriptions I have read of earthquakes in South America, Calabria, and other countries, those which happen in Sumatra are generally very slight; and the usual manner of building renders them but little formidable to the natives.

(*Footnote. Some gentlemen who deny the fact of its having at any time emitted flame, conjecture that what exhibits the appearance of smoke is more probably vapour arising from a considerable hot spring. The natives speak of it as a volcano.)

REMARKABLE EFFECTS OF AN EARTHQUAKE.

The most severe that I have known was chiefly experienced in the district of Manna in the year 1770. A village was destroyed by the houses falling down and taking fire, and several lives were lost.* The ground was in one place rent a quarter of a mile, the width of two fathoms, and depth of four or five. A bituminous matter is described to have swelled over the sides of the cavity, and the earth for a long time after the shocks was observed to contract and dilate alternately. Many parts of the hills far inland could be distinguished to have given way, and a consequence of this was that during three weeks Manna River was so much impregnated with particles of clay that the natives could not bathe in it. At this time was formed near to the mouth of Padang Guchi, a neighbouring river south of the former, a large plain, seven miles long and half a mile broad; where there had been before only a narrow beach. The quant.i.ty of earth brought down on this occasion was so considerable that the hill upon which the English resident's house stands appears, from indubitable marks, less elevated by fifteen feet than it was before the event.

(*Footnote. I am informed that in 1763 an entire village was swallowed up by an earthquake in Pulo Nias, one of the islands which lie off the western coast of Sumatra. In July or August of the same year a severe one was felt in Bengal.)

Earthquakes have been remarked by some to happen usually upon sudden changes of weather, and particularly after violent heats; but I do not vouch this upon my own experience, which has been pretty ample. They are preceded by a low rumbling noise like distant thunder. The domestic cattle and fowls are sensible of the preternatural motion, and seem much alarmed; the latter making the cry they are wont to do on the approach of birds of prey. Houses situated on a low sandy soil are least affected, and those which stand on distinct hills suffer most from the shocks because the further removed from the centre of motion the greater the agitation; and the loose contexture of the one foundation, making less resistance than the solidity of the other, subjects the building to less violence. s.h.i.+ps at anchor in the road, though several miles distant from the sh.o.r.e, are strongly sensible of the concussion.

NEW LAND FORMED.

Besides the new land formed by the convulsions above described, the sea by a gradual recess in some parts produces the same effect. Many instances of this kind, of no considerable extent however have been observed within the memory of persons now living. But it would seem to me that that large tract of land called Pulo Point, forming the bay of the name, near to Silebar, with much of the adjacent country has thus been left by the withdrawing or thrown up by the motion of the sea. Perhaps the point may have been at first an island (from whence its appellation of Pulo) and the parts more inland gradually united to it.* Various circ.u.mstances tend to corroborate such an opinion, and to evince the probability that this was not an original portion of the main but new, half-formed land. All the swamps and marshy grounds that lie within the beach, and near the extremity there are little else, are known, in consequence of repeated surveys, to be lower than the level of high-water; the bank of sand alone preventing an inundation. The country is not only quite free from hills or inequalities of any kind, but has scarcely a visible slope. Silebar River, which empties itself into Pulo Bay, is totally unlike those in other parts of the island. The motion of its stream is hardly perceptible; it is never affected by floods; its course is marked out, not by banks covered with ancient and venerable woods but by rows of mangroves and other aquatics springing from the ooze, and perfectly regular. Some miles from the mouth it opens into a beautiful and extensive lake, diversified with small islands, flat, and verdant with rushes only. The point of Pulo is covered with the arau tree (casuarina) or b.a.s.t.a.r.d-pine, as some have called it, which never grows but in the seasand and rises fast.

(*Footnote. Since I formed this conjecture I have been told that such a tradition of no very ancient date prevails amongst the inhabitants.)

ENCROACHMENT OF THE SEA.

None such are found toward Sungei-Lamo and the rest of the sh.o.r.e northward of Marlborough Point, where, on the contrary, you perceive the effects of continual depredations by the ocean. The old forest trees are there yearly undermined and, falling, obstruct the traveller; whilst about Pulo the arau-trees are continually springing up faster than they can be cut down or otherwise destroyed. Nature will not readily be forced from her course. The last time I visited that part there was a beautiful rising grove of these trees, establis.h.i.+ng a possession in their proper soil. The country, as well immediately here about as to a considerable distance inland, is an entire bed of sand without any mixture of clay or mould, which I know to have been in vain sought for many miles up the neighbouring rivers. To the northward of Padang there is a plain which has evidently been, in former times, a bay. Traces of a shelving beach are there distinguishable at the distance of one hundred and fifty yards from the present boundary of the sea.

But upon what hypothesis can it be accounted for that the sea should commit depredations on the northern coast, of which there are the most evident tokens as high up at least as Ipu, and probably to Indrapura, where the shelter of the neighbouring islands may put a stop to them, and that it should restore the land to the southward in the manner I have described? I am aware that according to the general motion of the tides from east to west this coast ought to receive a continual accession proportioned to the loss which others, exposed to the direction of this motion, must and do sustain; and it is likely that it does gain upon the whole. But the nature of my work obliges me to be more attentive to effects than causes, and to record facts though they should clash with systems the most just in theory, and most respectable in point of authority.

ISLANDS NEAR THE WEST COAST.

The chain of islands which lie parallel with the west coast of Sumatra may probably have once formed a part of the main and been separated from it, either by some violent effort of nature, or the gradual attrition of the sea. I should scarcely introduce the mention of this apparently vague surmise but that a circ.u.mstance presents itself on the coast which affords some stronger colour of proof than can be usually obtained in such instances. In many places, and particularly about Pally, we observe detached pieces of land standing singly, as islands, at the distance of one or two hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e, which were headlands of points running out into the sea within the remembrance of the inhabitants. The tops continue covered with trees or shrubs; but the sides are bare, abrupt, and perpendicular. The progress of insulation here is obvious and incontrovertible, and why may not larger islands, at a greater distance, have been formed in the revolution of ages by the same accidents? The probability is heightened by the direction of the islands Nias, Batu, Mantawei, Pagi, Mego, etc., the similarity of the rock, soil, and productions, and the regularity of soundings between them and the main, whilst without them the depth is unfathomable.

CORAL ROCKS.

Where the sh.o.r.e is flat or shelving the coast of Sumatra, as of all other tropical islands, is defended from the attacks of the sea by a reef or ledge of coral rock on which the surfs exert their violence without further effect than that of keeping its surface even, and reducing to powder those beautiful excrescences and ramifications which have been so much the object of the naturalist's curiosity, and which some ingenious men who have a.n.a.lysed them contend to be the work of insects. The coral powder is in particular places acc.u.mulated on the sh.o.r.e in great quant.i.ties, and appears, when not closely inspected, like a fine white sand.

SURF.

The surf (a word not to be found, I believe, in our dictionaries) is used in India, and by navigators in general, to express a peculiar swell and breaking of the sea upon the sh.o.r.e; the phenomena of which not having been hitherto much adverted to by writers I shall be the more circ.u.mstantial in my description of them.

The surf forms sometimes but a single range along the sh.o.r.e. At other times there is a succession of two, three, four, or more, behind each other, extending perhaps half a mile out to sea. The number of ranges is generally in proportion to the height and violence of the surf.

The surf begins to a.s.sume its form at some distance from the place where it breaks, gradually acc.u.mulating as it moves forward till it gains a height, in common, of fifteen to twenty feet,* when it overhangs at top and falls like a cascade, nearly perpendicular, involving itself as it descends. The noise made by the fall is prodigious, and during the stillness of the night may be heard many miles up the country.

(*Footnote. It may be presumed that in this estimation of its height I was considerably deceived.)

Though in the rising and formation of the surf the water seems to have a quick progressive motion towards the land, yet a light body on the surface is not carried forward, but, on the contrary, if the tide is ebbing, will recede from the sh.o.r.e; from which it would follow that the motion is only propagated in the water, like sound in air, and not the ma.s.s of water protruded. A similar species of motion is observed on shaking at one end a long cord held moderately slack, which is expressed by the word undulation. I have sometimes remarked however that a body which sinks deep and takes hold of the water appears to move towards sh.o.r.e with the course of the surf, as is perceptible in a boat landing which seems to shoot swiftly forward on the top of the swell; though probably it is only after having reached the summit, and may owe its velocity to its own weight in the descent.

Countries where the surfs prevail require boats of a peculiar construction, and the art of managing them demands the experience of a man's life. All European boats are more or less unfit, and seldom fail to occasion the sacrifice of the people on board them, in the imprudent attempts that are sometimes made to land with them on the open coast. The natives of Coromandel are remarkably expert in the management of their craft; but it is to be observed that the intervals between the breaking of the surfs are usually on that coast much longer than on the coast of Sumatra.

The force of the surf is extremely great. I have known it to overset a country vessel in such a manner that the top of the mast has stuck in the sand, and the lower end made its appearance through her bottom. Pieces of cloth have been taken up from a wreck, twisted and rent by its involved motion. In some places the surfs are usually greater at high, and in others at low, water; but I believe they are uniformly more violent during the spring-tides.

CONSIDERATIONS RESPECTING THE CAUSE OF THE SURF.

I shall proceed to inquire into the efficient cause of the surfs. The winds have doubtless a strong relation to them. If the air was in all places of equal density, and not liable to any motion, I suppose the water would also remain perfectly at rest and its surface even; abstracting from the general course of the tides and the partial irregularities occasioned by the influx of rivers. The current of the air impels the water and causes a swell, which is the regular rising and subsiding of the waves. This rise and fall is similar to the vibrations of a pendulum and subject to like laws. When a wave is at its height it descends by the force of gravity, and the momentum acquired in descending impels the neighbouring particles, which in their turn rise and impel others, and thus form a succession of waves. This is the case in the open sea; but when the swell approaches the sh.o.r.e and the depth of water is not in proportion to the size of the swell the subsiding wave, instead of pressing on a body of water, which might rise in equal quant.i.ty, presses on the ground, whose reaction causes it to rush on in that manner which we call a surf. Some think that the peculiar form of it may be plainly accounted for from the shallowness and shelving of the beach. When a swell draws near to such a beach the lower parts of the water, meeting first with obstruction from the bottom, stand still, whilst the higher parts respectively move onward, by which a rolling and involved motion is produced that is augmented by the return of the preceding swell. I object that this solution is founded on the supposition of an actual progressive motion of the body of water in forming a surf; and, that certainly not being the fact, it seems deficient. The only real progression of the water is occasioned by the perpendicular fall, after the breaking of the surf, when from its weight it foams on to a greater or less distance in proportion to the height from which it fell and the slope of the sh.o.r.e.

That the surfs are not, like common waves, the immediate effect of the wind, is evident from this, that the highest and most violent often happen when there is the least wind and vice versa. And sometimes the surfs will continue with an equal degree of violence during a variety of weather. On the west coast of Sumatra the highest are experienced during the south-east monsoon, which is never attended with such gales of wind as the north-west. The motion of the surf is not observed to follow the course of the wind, but often the contrary; and when it blows hard from the land the spray of the sea may be seen to fly in a direction opposite to the body of it, though the wind has been for many hours in the same point.

Are the surfs the effect of gales of wind at sea, which do not happen to extend to the sh.o.r.e but cause a violent agitation throughout a considerable tract of the waters, which motion, communicating with less distant parts, and meeting at length with resistance from the sh.o.r.e, occasions the sea to swell and break in the manner described? To this I object that there seems no regular correspondence between their magnitude and the apparent agitation of the water without them: that gales of wind, except at particular periods, are very unfrequent in the Indian seas, where the navigation is well known to be remarkably safe, whilst the surfs are almost continual; and that gales are not found to produce this effect in other extensive oceans. The west coast of Ireland borders a sea nearly as extensive and much more wild than the coast of Sumatra, and yet there, though when it blows hard the swell on the sh.o.r.e is high and dangerous, is there nothing that resembles the surfs of India.

PROBABLE CAUSE OF THE SURF.

These, so general in the tropical lat.i.tudes, are, upon the most probable hypothesis I have been able to form, after long observation and much thought and inquiry, the consequence of the trade or perpetual winds which prevail at a distance from sh.o.r.e between the parallels of thirty degrees north and south, whose uniform and invariable action causes a long and constant swell, that exists even in the calmest weather, about the line, towards which its direction tends from either side. This swell or libration of the sea is so prodigiously long, and the sensible effect of its height, of course, so much diminished, that it is not often attended to; the gradual slope engrossing almost the whole horizon when the eye is not very much elevated above its surface: but persons who have sailed in those parts may recollect that, even when the sea is apparently the most still and level, a boat or other object at a distance from the s.h.i.+p will be hidden from the sight of one looking towards it from the lower deck for the s.p.a.ce of minutes together. This swell, when a squall happens or the wind freshens up, will for a time have other subsidiary waves on the extent of its surface, breaking often in a direction contrary to it, and which will again subside as a calm returns without having produced on it any perceptible effect. Sumatra, though not continually exposed to the south-east trade-wind, is not so distant but that its influence may be presumed to extend to it, and accordingly at Pulo Pisang, near the southern extremity of the island, a constant southerly sea is observed even after a hard north-west wind. This incessant and powerful swell rolling in from an ocean, open even to the pole, seems an agent adequate to the prodigious effects produced on the coast; whilst its very size contributes to its being overlooked. It reconciles almost all the difficulties which the phenomena seem to present, and in particular it accounts for the decrease of the surf during the north-west monsoon, the local wind then counteracting the operation of the general one; and it is corroborated by an observation I have made that the surfs on the Sumatran coast ever begin to break at their southern extreme, the motion of the swell not being perpendicular to the direction of the sh.o.r.e. This manner of explaining their origin seems to carry much reason with it; but there occurs to me one objection which I cannot get over, and which a regard to truth obliges me to state.

The trade-winds are remarkably steady and uniform, and the swell generated by them is the same. The surfs are much the reverse, seldom persevering for two days in the same degree of violence; often mountains high in the morning and nearly subsided by night. How comes a uniform cause to produce effects so unsteady, unless by the intervention of secondary causes, whose nature and operation we are unacquainted with?

It is clear to me that the surfs as above described are peculiar to those climates which lie within the remoter limits of the trade-winds, though in higher lat.i.tudes large swells and irregular breakings of the sea are to be met with after boisterous weather. Possibly the following causes may be judged to conspire, with that I have already specified, towards occasioning this distinction. The former region being exposed to the immediate influence of the two great luminaries, the water, from their direct impulse, is liable to more violent agitation than nearer the poles where their power is felt only by indirect communication. The equatorial parts of the earth performing their diurnal revolution with greater velocity than the rest, a larger circle being described in the same time, the waters thereabout, from the stronger centrifugal force, may be supposed to feel less restraint from the sluggish principle of matter; to have less gravity; and therefore to be more obedient to external impulses of every kind, whether from the winds or any other cause.

TIDES.

The spring-tides on the west coast of Sumatra are estimated to rise in general no more than four feet, owing to its open, unconfined situation, which prevents any acc.u.mulation of the tide, as is the case in narrow seas. It is always high-water there when the moon is in the horizon, and consequently at six o'clock nearly, on the days of conjunction and opposition throughout the year, in parts not far remote from the equator.* This, according to Newton's theory, is about three hours later than the uninterrupted course of nature, owing to the obvious impediment the waters meet with in revolving from the eastward.

(*Footnote. Owing to this uniformity it becomes an easy matter for the natives to ascertain the height of the tide at any hour that the moon is visible. Whilst she appears to ascend the water falls and vice versa; the lowest of the ebb happening when she is in her meridian. The vulgar rule for calculating the tides is rendered also to Europeans more simple and practical from the same cause. There only needs to add together the epact, number of the month, and day of the month; the sum of which, if under thirty, gives the moon's age--the excess, if over. Allow forty-eight minutes for each day or, which is the same, take four-fifths of the age, and it will give you the number of hours after six o'clock at which high-water happens. A readiness at this calculation is particularly useful in a country where the sea-beach is the general road for travelling.)

CHAPTER 2.

DISTINCTION OF INHABITANTS.

REJANGS CHOSEN FOR GENERAL DESCRIPTION.

PERSONS AND COMPLEXION.

CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTS.

GENERAL ACCOUNT OF THE INHABITANTS.

Having exhibited a general view of the island as it is in the hands of nature, I shall now proceed to a description of the people who inhabit and cultivate it, and shall endeavour to distinguish the several species or cla.s.ses of them in such a manner as may best tend to perspicuity, and to furnish clear ideas of the matter.

VARIOUS MODES OF DIVISION.

The most obvious division, and which has been usually made by the writers of voyages, is that of Mahometan inhabitants of the sea-coast, and Pagans of the inland country. This division, though not without its degree of propriety, is vague and imperfect; not only because each description of people differ considerably among themselves, but that the inland inhabitants are, in some places, Mahometans, and those of the coast, in others, what they term Pagans. It is not unusual with persons who have not resided in this part of the East to call the inhabitants of the islands indiscriminately by the name of Malays. This is a more considerable error, and productive of greater confusion than the former.

By attempting to reduce things to heads too general we defeat the very end we propose to ourselves in defining them at all: we create obscurity where we wish to throw light. On the other hand, to attempt enumerating and distinguis.h.i.+ng the variety, almost endless, of petty sovereignties and nations into which this island is divided, many of which differ nothing in person or manners from their neighbours, would be a task both insurmountable and useless. I shall aim at steering a middle course, and accordingly shall treat of the inhabitants of Sumatra under the following summary distinctions, taking occasion as it may offer to mention the princ.i.p.al subdivisions. And first it is proper to distinguish the empire of Menangkabau and the Malays; in the next place the Achinese; then the Battas; the Rejangs; and next to them the people of Lampong.*

(*Footnote. In the course of my inquiries amongst the natives concerning the aborigines of the island I have been informed of two different species of people dispersed in the woods and avoiding all communication with the other inhabitants. These they call Orang Kubu and Orang Gugu.