SUMATRA, the largest, excepting Borneo, of the Sunda islands in the East Indies. It extends itself north-west and south-east; having Malacca on the north, Borneo on the east, and Java on the south-east, from which it is parted by the straits of Sunda. It is divided by the equinoctial nearly into two equal parts; extending to 6° of latitude, north and south. It is about 250 leagues in length, 60 in breadth, and 500 in circumference. It is very rich and fertile; yielding not only sulphur, rice, ginger, pepper, camphire, cassia, sandal, and other woods and drugs; but also fine tin, iron, copper, silver, gold, and diamonds. It is so rich in gold, that it is supposed to be the Ophir and golden Chersonese of the ancients; but what the Europeans trade with them for chiefly is their pepper. The camphire of Sumatra is looked upon as the very finest in the Indies, and, as Mr Charles Miller assures us, is worth 200 l. per hundred weight on the spot. It bears a great price in China, where they make use of it as a kind of leaven, mixing it with their own which is a coarser kind, to which they think it gives odour and spirit.
Both the English and Dutch have several colonies and settlements here. The chief of the British settlements are those of Bencoolen and Fort Marlborough, on the west coast; from whence the East India company import more pepper than from any country in India. There are also great quantities of the best walking-canes imported from thence.
The natives are of a very dark swarthy complexion, but not black. According to Mr Miller's account, they are cannibals. The coasts are possessed by Mohammedan princes, of whom the king of Achen, at the north end of the island, is the most considerable. The inland country is in possession of several Pagan princes, who have little correspondence with foreigners. The animals here are much the same as those on the neighbouring continent of Malacca.