d glowing flowers brighten the
dusky avenues with patches of vivid colour. The determined aspect of
the Sumatran people denotes the superior calibre of the ancestral stock
which colonised the Archipelago, for foreign intercourse, which
elsewhere modified national character, scarcely affected the Sumatran
Malays, independent of the servile yoke imposed by the mighty princes
of Java. The forty _Soekoes_, or clans, of Sumatra, are sub-divided
into branches consisting of numerous families, all descended from a
common stock in the female line. This curiously constituted pedigree is
known as the Matriarchate, an ancient social system only retained in
Western Sumatra, and among certain South American tribes. The resolute
mien and dignified carriage of the Sumatran woman denote clear
consciousness of her supreme importance. The cringing submission so
painfully characteristic of Oriental womanhood is wholly unknown, and
though nominally of Mohammedan faith, the humble position prescribed by
the Koran to the female sex is a forgotten article of Sumatra's
hereditary creed. After marriage (forbidden between members of the same
clan) both man and woman remain in their own family circle. The husband
is only an occasional visitor, and the wife is regarded as the head of
the house. Her children remain under her exclusive care, and inherit
her property, together with the half of what their father and mother
earn together. The other half goes to the brothers and sisters of the
husband, whose titles descend to his own brothers and sisters. Sumatra
is veritably El Dorado to the Eastern wife and mother, conversant with
every detail respecting the management of land or money, and jealously
guarding the time-honoured rights and privileges of her exalted
position.

The hereditary chieftains of Sumatran clans exercise a patriarchal rule
of uncompromising severity, and combine in every district to form the
_Laras_ or local Council, the distance separating forest and mountain
_campongs_ often necessitating sub-division into a village assembly.
The _Laras_, and those rural chieftains nominated by popular consent,
possess a seat on the Supreme Council of the Dutch Government, thus
forming the transitional element between Asiatic and European rule.
There is no Sumatran nobility, and although the hereditary chief of a
clan is invested with official authority, the stringent regulations of
the Matriarchate acknowledge no superiority of social status as