son
napkin manufactured for that use. They are wont to entertain strangers
with much more profusion than is met with in the rest of the island. If
the guest is of any consequence they do not hesitate to kill, beside
goats and fowls, a buffalo, or several, according to the period of his
stay, and the number of his attendants. One man has been known to
entertain a person of rank and his suite for sixteen days, during which
time there were not less than a hundred dishes of rice spread each day,
containing some one, some two bamboos. They have dishes here, of a
species of china or earthenware, called batu benauang, brought from the
eastward, remarkably heavy, and very dear, some of them being valued at
forty dollars a piece. The breaking one of them is a family loss of no
small importance.

RECEPTION OF STRANGERS.

Abundantly more ceremony is used among these people at interviews with
strangers than takes place in the countries adjacent to them. Not only
the chief person of a party travelling, but every one of his attendants,
is obliged, upon arriving at a town, to give a formal account of their
business, or occasion of coming that way. When the principal man of the
dusun is acquainted by the stranger with the motives of his journey he
repeats his speech at full length before he gives an answer; and if it is
a person of great consequence, the words must pass through two or three
mouths before they are supposed to come with sufficient ceremony to his
ears. This in fact has more the air of adding to his own importance and
dignity than to that of the guest; but it is not in Sumatra alone that
respect is manifested by this seeming contradiction.

The terms of the jujur, or equivalent for wives, is the same here,
nearly, as with the Rejangs. The kris-head is not essential to the
bargain, as among the people of Passummah. The father of the girl never
admits of the putus tali kulo, or whole sum being paid, and thereby
withholds from the husband, in any case, the right of selling his wife,
who, in the event of a divorce, returns to her relations. Where the putus
tali is allowed to take place, he has a property in her, little differing
from that of a slave, as formerly observed. The particular sums which
constitute the jujur are less complex here than at other places. The
value of the maiden's golden trinkets is nicely estimated, and her jujur
regulated according to that and the rank of her parents. The semando
marriage scarcely