batants moving at a distance from each
other in cadence, and making many turns and springs unnecessary in the
representation of a real combat. This entertainment is more common among
the Malays than in the country. The chief weapons of offence used by
these people are the kujur or lance and the kris. This last is properly
Malayan, but in all parts of the island they have a weapon equivalent,
though in general less curious in its structure, wanting that waving in
the blade for which the kris is remarkable, and approaching nearer to
daggers or knives.

Among their exercises we never observe jumping or running. They smile at
the Europeans, who in their excursions take so many unnecessary leaps.
The custom of going barefoot may be a principal impediment to this
practice in a country overrun with thorny shrubs, and where no fences
occur to render it a matter of expediency.

DIVERSION OF TOSSING A BALL.

They have a diversion similar to that described by Homer as practised
among the Phaeacians, which consists in tossing an elastic wicker ball or
round basket of split rattans into the air, and from one player to
another, in a peculiar manner. This game is called by the Malays sipak
raga, or, in the dialect of Bencoolen, chipak rago, and is played by a
large party standing in an extended circle, who endeavour to keep up the
ball by striking it either perpendicularly, in order to receive it again,
or obliquely to some other person of the company, with the foot or the
hand, the heel or the toe, the knee, the shoulder, the head, or with any
other part of the body; the merit appearing to consist in producing the
effect in the least obvious or most whimsical manner; and in this sport
many of them attain an extraordinary degree of expertness. Among the
plates of Lord Macartney's Embassy will be found the representation of a
similar game, as practised by the natives of Cochin-china.

SMOKING OF OPIUM.

The Sumatrans, and more particularly the Malays, are much attached, in
common with many other eastern people, to the custom of smoking opium.
The poppy which produces it not growing on the island, it is annually
imported from Bengal in considerable quantities, in chests containing a
hundred and forty pounds each. It is made up in cakes of five or six
pounds weight, and packed with dried leaves; in which situation it will
continue good and vendible for two years, but after that period grows
hard and diminishes considerably in value.