d that the same extraordinary rule, with respect to property in
general, prevails also amongst the Malays of that part of the island, and
even in the neighbourhood of Padang. The authorities for this are various
and unconnected with each other, but not sufficiently circumstantial to
induce me to admit it as a generally established practice.

RESPECT FOR THE SULTAN OF MENANGKABAU.

Notwithstanding the independent spirit of the Battas, and their contempt
of all power that would affect a superiority over their little societies,
they have a superstitious veneration for the sultan of Menangkabau, and
show blind submission to his relations and emissaries, real or pretended,
when such appear among them for the purpose of levying contributions:
even when insulted and put in fear of their lives they make no attempt at
resistance: they think that their affairs would never prosper; that their
padi would be blighted, and their buffaloes die; that they would remain
under a kind of spell for offending those sacred messengers.

PERSONS.

The Battas are in their persons rather below the stature of the Malays,
and their complexions are fairer; which may perhaps be owing to their
distance, for the most part, from the sea, an element they do not at all
frequent.

DRESS.

Their dress is commonly of a sort of cotton cloth manufactured by
themselves, thick, harsh, and wiry, about four astas or cubits long, and
two in breadth, worn round the middle, with a scarf over the shoulder.
These are of mixed colours, the prevalent being a brownish red and a blue
approaching to black. They are fond of adorning them, particularly the
scarf, with strings and tassels of beads. The covering of the head is
usually the bark of a tree, but the superior class wear a strip of
foreign blue cloth in imitation of the Malayan destars, and a few have
bajus (outer garments) of chintz. The young women, beside the cloth round
the middle, have one over the breasts, and (as noticed in Mr. Miller's
journal) wear in their ears numerous rings of tin, as well as several
large rings of thick brass wire round their necks. On festival days
however they ornament themselves with earrings of gold, hair-pins, of
which the heads are fashioned like birds or dragons, a kind of
three-cornered breastplate, and hollow rings upon the upper arm, all, in
like manner, of gold. The kima shell, which abounds in the bay, is
likewise worked into arm-rings, whiter, and taking a better polis