y they hold public fairs or markets on every fourth day
throughout the year; each fair, of course, lasting one day. The people in
the district of the fourth stage assemble with their goods at the
appointed place, to which those of the third resort in order to purchase
them. The people of the third, in like manner, supply the wants of the
second, and the second of the first, who dispose, on the day the market
is held, of the merchandise for which they have trafficked with the
Europeans and Malays. On these occasions all hostilities are suspended.
Each man who possesses a musket carries it with a green bough in the
muzzle, as a token of peace, and afterwards, when he comes to the spot,
following the example of the director or manager of the party, discharges
the loading into a mound of earth, in which, before his departure, he
searches for his ball. There is but one house at the place where the
market is held, and that is for the purpose of gaming. The want of booths
is supplied by the shade of regular rows of fruit-trees, mostly durian,
of which one avenue is reserved for the women. The dealings are conducted
with order and fairness; the chief remaining at a little distance, to be
referred to in case of dispute, and a guard is at hand, armed with
lances, to keep the peace; yet with all this police, which bespeaks
civilization, I have been assured by those who have had an opportunity of
attending their meetings that in the whole of their appearance and
deportment there is more of savage life than is observed in the manners
of the Rejangs, or inhabitants of Lampong. Traders from the remoter Batta
districts, lying north and south, assemble at these periodical markets,
where all their traffic is carried on, and commodities bartered. They are
not however peculiar to this country, being held, among other places, at
Batang-kapas and Ipu. By the Malays they are termed onan.

ESTIMATE BY COMMODITIES INSTEAD OF COIN.

Having no coin all value is estimated among them by certain commodities.
In trade they calculate by tampangs (cakes) of benzoin; in transactions
among themselves more commonly by buffaloes: sometimes brass wire and
sometimes beads are used as a medium. A galang, or ring of brass wire,
represents about the value of a dollar. But for small payments salt is
the most in use. A measure called a salup, weighing about two pounds, is
equal to a fanam or twopence-halfpenny: a balli, another small measure,
goes for four keppen