form of government, in towns, the houses of which are thatched with women’s hair.  It happened that in one month seven or eight people were killed by these prowling beasts in Manna district; upon which a report became current that fifteen hundred of them were come down from Passummah, of which number four were without understanding (gila), and having separated from the rest ran about the country occasioning all the mischief that was felt.  The alligators also are highly destructive, owing to the constant practice of bathing in the rivers, and are regarded with nearly the same degree of religious terror.  Fear is the parent of superstition, by ignorance.  Those two animals prove the Sumatran’s greatest scourge.  The mischief the former commit is incredible, whole villages being often depopulated by them, and the suffering people learn to reverence as supernatural effects the furious ravages of an enemy they have not resolution to oppose.

The Sumatrans are firmly persuaded that various particular persons are what they term betuah (sacred, impassive, invulnerable, not liable to accident), and this quality they sometimes extend to things inanimate, as ships and boats.  Such an opinion, which we should suppose every man might have an opportunity of bringing to the test of truth, affords a humiliating proof of the weakness and credulity of human nature, and the fallibility of testimony, when a film of prejudice obscures the light of the understanding.  I have known two men, whose honesty, good faith, and reasonableness in the general concerns of life were well established, and whose assertions would have weight in transactions of consequence:  these men I have heard maintain, with the most deliberate confidence and an appearance of inward conviction of their own sincerity, that they had more than once in the course of their wars attempted to run their weapons into the naked body of their adversary, which they found impenetrable, their points being continually and miraculously turned without any effort on the part of the orang betuah:  and that hundreds of instances of the like nature, where the invulnerable man did not possess the smallest natural means of opposition, had come within their observation.  An English officer, with more courage and humour than discretion, exposed one imposture of this kind.  A man having boasted in his presence that he was endowed with this supernatural privilege, the officer took an opportunity of applying to his arm the point of a sword and drew the blood, to the no little diversion of the spectators, and mortification of the pretender to superior gifts, who vowed revenge, and would have taken it had not means been used to keep him at a distance.  But a single detection of charlatanerie is not effectual to destroy a prevalent superstition.  These impostors are usually found among the Malays and not the more simple country people.

NO MISSIONARIES.