error, and productive of greater confusion than the former.
By attempting to reduce things to heads too general we defeat the very
end we propose to ourselves in defining them at all: we create obscurity
where we wish to throw light. On the other hand, to attempt enumerating
and distinguishing the variety, almost endless, of petty sovereignties
and nations into which this island is divided, many of which differ
nothing in person or manners from their neighbours, would be a task both
insurmountable and useless. I shall aim at steering a middle course, and
accordingly shall treat of the inhabitants of Sumatra under the following
summary distinctions, taking occasion as it may offer to mention the
principal subdivisions. And first it is proper to distinguish the empire
of Menangkabau and the Malays; in the next place the Achinese; then the
Battas; the Rejangs; and next to them the people of Lampong.*

(*Footnote. In the course of my inquiries amongst the natives concerning
the aborigines of the island I have been informed of two different
species of people dispersed in the woods and avoiding all communication
with the other inhabitants. These they call Orang Kubu and Orang Gugu.
The former are said to be pretty numerous, especially in that part of the
country which lies between Palembang and Jambi. Some have at times been
caught and kept as slaves in Labun; and a man of that place is now
married to a tolerably handsome Kubu girl who was carried off by a party
that discovered their huts. They have a language quite peculiar to
themselves, and they eat promiscuously whatever the woods afford, as
deer, elephant, rhinoceros, wild hog, snakes, or monkeys. The Gugu are
much scarcer than these, differing in little but the use of speech from
the Orang Utan of Borneo; their bodies being covered with long hair.
There have not been above two or three instances of their being met with
by the people of Labun (from whom my information is derived) and one of
these was entrapped many years ago in much the same manner as the
carpenter in Pilpay's Fables caught the monkey. He had children by a
Labun woman which also were more hairy than the common race; but the
third generation are not to be distinguished from others. The reader will
bestow what measure of faith he thinks due to this relation, the veracity
of which I do not pretend to vouch for. It has probably some foundation
in truth but is exaggerated in the circumstances.)

Menangkabau