These afford less striking
and characteristic features in delineating the picture of mankind, and,
though they may add to the beauty, diminish from the genuineness of the
piece. We must not look for unequivocal generic marks, where the breed,
in order to mend it, has been crossed by a foreign mixture. All the arts
of primary necessity are comprehended within two distinctions: those
which protect us from the inclemency of the weather and other outward
accidents; and those which are employed in securing the means of
subsistence. Both are immediately essential to the continuance of life,
and man is involuntarily and immediately prompted to exercise them by the
urgent calls of nature, even in the merest possible state of savage and
uncultivated existence. In climates like that of Sumatra this impulse
extends not far. The human machine is kept going with small effort in so
favourable a medium. The spring of importunate necessity there soon loses
its force, and consequently the wheels of invention that depend upon it
fail to perform more than a few simple revolutions. In regions less mild
this original motive to industry and ingenuity carries men to greater
lengths in the application of arts to the occasions of life; and these of
course in an equal space of time attain to greater perfection than among
the inhabitants of the tropical latitudes, who find their immediate wants
supplied with facility, and prefer the negative pleasure of inaction to
the enjoyment of any conveniences that are to be purchased with exertion
and labour. This consideration may perhaps tend to reconcile the high
antiquity universally allowed to Asiatic nations, with the limited
progress of arts and sciences among them; in which they are manifestly
surpassed by people who compared with them are but of very recent date.

The Sumatrans however in the construction of their habitations have
stepped many degrees beyond those rude contrivances which writers
describe the inhabitants of some other Indian countries to have been
contented with adopting in order to screen themselves from the immediate
influence of surrounding elements. Their houses are not only permanent
but convenient, and are built in the vicinity of each other that they may
enjoy the advantages of mutual assistance and protection resulting from a
state of society.*

(*Footnote. In several of the small islands near Sumatra (including the
Nicobars), whose inhabitants in general are in a very low