an island of Asia, the most western of the Sunda islands, and constituting on that side the boundary of the Eastern Archipelago. Its general direction is nearly north-west and south-east. The equator divides it into almost equal parts, the one extremity being in 5° 53' N. and the other in 5° 56' S. Lat. Acheen Head, at the north extremity of the island, is in longitude 95° 34' east. It lies exposed on the south-west side to the Indian ocean; the north point stretches into the bay of Bengal; to the north-east it is divided from the peninsula of Malacca by the straits of that name; to the east by the straits of Banca, from the island of that name; to the south-east by the commencement of what are called the Chinese seas; and on the south by the straits of Sunda, which separate it from the island of Java. It is about 920 miles in length, but from 100 to 150 only in breadth. No account had been given of this island by any Englishman till the year 1778, when Mr Charles Miller (son of the late botanical gardener) published an account of the manners of a particular district, in the 68th volume of the Philosophical Transactions. These were the Battas, a people who live in the interior parts, called the Caffia Country. They differ from all the other inhabitants in language, manners, and customs. They eat the prisoners whom they take in war, and hang up their skulls as trophies in their houses. He observes, however, that human flesh is eaten by them in terror, and not as common food, though they prefer it to all others, and speak with peculiar raptures of the soles of the feet and palms of the hands. They expressed much surprise that the white people did not kill, much less eat, their prisoners. From this country the greatest part of the caffia that is sent to Europe is procured. It abounds also with the camphire trees, which constitute the common timber in use; and in these trees the camphire is found native, in a concrete form. It is remarkable that, in this state, it is sold to the Chinese at the price of 250l. or 300l. per cent.; but these dexterous artists contrive to furnish the Europeans with it at about a quarter of that price. In 1783, Mr Marfden, who had been secretary to the president and council of Fort Marlborough, published a History of Sumatra, with very copious particulars of the island. He represented it as surpassed by few in the beautiful indulgences of nature. A chain of high mountains runs through its whole extent; the ranges in many parts being double and treble; their altitude, though great, is not sufficient to occasion their being covered with snow during any part of the year. Between these ridges are extensive plains, considerably elevated above the surface of the maritime lands. In these the air is cool; and from this advantage they are esteemed the most eligible portion of the country, are the best inhabited, and the most cleared from woods, which elsewhere, in general, throughout Sumatra, cover both hills and valleys with an eternal shade. Here too are found many large and beautiful lakes, that facilitate much the communication between the different parts. The heat of the air is far from being so intense as might be expected from a country occupying the middle of the torrid zone; and it is more temperate than many regions within the tropics; the thermometer at the most sultry hour, about two in the afternoon, generally fluctuating between 82 and 85 degrees. Mr Marfden divides the inhabitants into Malays, Acheene, Battas, Lampoons, and Rejangs; and he takes the latter as his standard of description, with respect to the persons, manners, and customs, of the inhabitants. They are rather below the middle stature; their bulk in proportion; their limbs for the most part slight, but well shaped, and particularly small at the wrists and ankles; and, upon the whole, they are gracefully formed. Their hair is strong, and of a shining black. The men are beardless, great pains being taken to render them so when boys, by rubbing their chins with a kind of quicklime. Their complexion is properly yellow, wanting the red tinge that constitutes a copper or tawny colour. They are in general lighter than the Mestees, or half-breed, of the rest of India; those of the superior class, who are not exposed to the rays of the sun, and particularly their women of rank, approaching to a degree of fairness. If beauty consisted in this one quality, some of them would surpass our brunettes in Europe. The major part of the females are ugly, many of them even to disgust; yet among them are some whose appearance is strikingly beautiful, whatever composition of person, features, and complexion, that sentiment may be the result of. Some of the inhabitants of the hilly parts are observed to have the swelled neck or goitre; but they attempt no remedy for it, as these wen's are consitent with the highest health. The rites of marriage among the Sumatrans consist simply in joining the hands of the parties, and pronouncing them man and wife without much ceremony, excepting the entertainment which is given upon the occasion by the father of the girl. The customs of the Sumatrans permit their having as many wives as they can purchase, or afford to maintain; but it is extremely rare that an infance occurs of their having more than one, and that only among a few of the chiefs. This continence they owe, in some measure, to their poverty. The dictates of frugality are more powerful with them than the irregular calls of appetite, and make them decline an indulgence from which their law does not restrain them. Mothers carry their children, not on the arm as our nurses do, but straddling on the hip, and usually supported by a cloth which ties in a knot on the opposite-shoulder. The children are nursed but little; are not confined confining by any swathing or bandages; and being suffered to roll about the floor, soon learn to walk and shift for themselves. When cradles are used, they swing suspended from the ceilings of the rooms.

The Sumatrans are so fond of cock-fighting, that a father on his death-bed has been known to desire his son to take the first opportunity of matching a cock for a sum equal to his whole property, under a blind conviction of its being invulnerable. When a cock is killed or runs, the other must have sufficient spirit and vigour left to peck at him three times on his being held up to him for that purpose, or it becomes a drawn battle; and sometimes an experienced cocker will place the head of his vanquished bird in such an uncouth situation as to terrify the other, and render him unable to give this proof of victory.

The wild beasts of Sumatra are tigers, elephants, rhinoceroses, bears, and monkeys. The tigers prove to the inhabitants both in their journeys and even their domestic occupations most destructive enemies. The number of people annually slain by these rapacious tyrants of the woods is almost incredible. Whole villages have been depopulated by them; yet from a superstitious prejudice, it is with difficulty they are prevailed upon, by a large reward which the India Company offers, to use methods of destroying them, till they have sustained some particular injury in their own family or kindred. The size and strength of the species which prevails on this island are prodigious. They are said to break with a stroke of their fore paw the leg of a horse or a buffalo; and the largest prey they kill is without difficulty dragged by them into the woods. This they usually perform on the second night, being supposed on the first to gratify themselves with sucking the blood only. Time is by this delay afforded to prepare for their destruction, either by shooting them, or placing a vessel of water strongly impregnated with arsenic near the carcase, which is fastened to a tree to prevent its being carried off. The tiger having satiated himself with the flesh, is prompted to assuage his thirst with the tempting liquor at hand, and perishes in the indulgence. Their chief subsistence is most probably the unfortunate monkeys with which the woods abound. They are described as alluring them to their fate by a fascinating power, similar to what has been supposed of the snake; and, says Mr Marlden, "I am not incredulous enough to treat the idea with contempt, having myself observed, that when an alligator or a crocodile, in a river, comes under an overhanging branch of a tree, the monkeys, in a state of alarm and distraction, crowd to the extremity, and, chattering and trembling, approach nearer and nearer to the amphibious monster that waits to devour them as they drop, which their fright and number render almost unavoidable." These alligators likewise occasion the loss of many inhabitants, frequently destroying the people as they bathe in the river, according to their regular custom, and which the perpetual evidence of the risk attending it cannot deter them from. A superstitious idea of their sanctity also preserves them from molestation, although, with a hook of sufficient strength, they may be taken without much difficulty. The other animals of Sumatra are buffaloes, a small kind of horses, goats, hogs, deer, bullocks, and hog-deer. This last is an animal somewhat larger than a rabbit, the head resembling that of a hog, and its thanks and feet like those of the deer. The bezoar-stone found on this animal has been valued at 10 times its weight in gold; it is of a dark brown colour, smooth on the outside; and the coat being taken off, it appears still darker, with strings running underneath the coat: it will swim on the top of the water. If it be infused in any liquid, it makes it extremely bitter: the virtues usually attributed to this stone are cleansing the stomach, creating an appetite, and sweetening the blood.

Of birds they have a greater variety than of beasts. The coo-ow, or Sumatran pheasant, is a bird of uncommon beauty. They have flocks of prodigious size, parrots, dung-hill fowls, ducks, the largest cocks in the world, wood-pigeons, doves, and a great variety of small birds, different from ours, and distinguished by the beauty of their colours. Of the reptiles, they have lizards, flying-lizards, and chameleons. The island swarms with insects, and their varieties are no less extraordinary than their numbers. Rice is the only grain that grows in the country; they have sugar-canes, beans, peale, radishes, yams, potatoes, pumpkins, and several kinds of pot-herbs unknown to Europe; and here are to be found most of the fruits to be met with in other parts of the East Indies, in the greatest perfection. Indigo, Brazil-wood, two species of the bread fruit tree, pepper, benjamin, coffee, and cotton, are likewise the produce of this island, as well as caffa and camphire mentioned above. Here also is the cabbage-tree and silk cotton tree; and the forests contain a great variety of valuable species of wood, as ebony, pine, sandal, eagle or aloes, teck, manchineel, and iron-wood, and also the banyan tree. Gold, tin, iron, copper, and lead, are found in the country; and the former is supposed to be as plentiful here as in Peru or Mexico. The finest gold and gold-dust are found in the country of Limong, immediately contiguous to the presidency of Fort Marlborough, to which the merchants repair annually for the purchase of opium, and such other articles as they may be in want of, and give for them gold of so pure a nature as to contain little or no alloy. The native indolence of the Malay Asiatic disposition prevents them from collecting more than is necessary, sufficient to supply the few and simple wants of a race of men as yet unenlightened by civilization and science, and ignorant of the full extent of the advantages of the country inhabited by them. The roads leading to this golden country are almost impassive; affording only a scanty path to a single traveller, where whole nights must be passed in the open air, exposed to the malignant influence of a hostile climate, in a country infested by the most ferocious wild boars. These are circumstances that have hitherto checked curiosity; but perseverance and studied precaution will surmount the obstacles they furnish, and such discoveries might be made as would amply compensate for the difficulties leading to them. The gold merchants who come from the neighbouring and less rich countries, give us such accounts of the facility of procuring gold as border nearly on the marvelous, and would be altogether incredible, if great quantities of that metal produced by them did not in some degree evince the certainty of their accounts.

This great abundance of gold in Sumatra induces Mr Marlden to suppose that island to be the Ophir of Solomon; a conjecture which, in his opinion, derives no small force from the word Ophir's being really a Malay substantive, of a compound tense, signifying a mountain containing containing gold. The natives, he confesses, have no oral tradition on the subject; and we have elsewhere made it probable that Ophir was situated in a different quarter of the world (see OPHIR). Besides the metals and different species of wood which we have mentioned, Sumatra produces sulphur, arsenic, faltpetre, and beeswax, with edible birds-nests, which are there commodities of great importance (see BIRDs-Nest).

The English and Dutch have factories on this island; the principal one of the former being Fort Marlborough, on the south-west coast. The original natives of Sumatra are Pagans; but it is to be observed, that when the Sumatrans, or any of the natives of the eastern islands, learn to read the Arabic character, and submit to circumcision, they are said to become Malays; the term Malay being understood to mean Muslim. See Acheen.