state of
civilisation, the houses are built circularly. Vid Asiatic Researches
volume 4 page 129 plate.)

VILLAGES.

The dusuns or villages (for the small number of inhabitants assembled in
each does not entitle them to the appellations of towns) are always
situated on the banks of a river or lake for the convenience of bathing
and of transporting goods. An eminence difficult of ascent is usually
made choice of for security. The access to them is by footways, narrow
and winding, of which there are seldom more than two; one to the country
and the other to the water; the latter in most places so steep as to
render it necessary to cut steps in the cliff or rock. The dusuns, being
surrounded with abundance of fruit-trees, some of considerable height, as
the durian, coco, and betel-nut, and the neighbouring country for a
little space about being in some degree cleared of wood for the rice and
pepper plantations, these villages strike the eye at a distance as clumps
merely, exhibiting no appearance of a town or any place of habitation.
The rows of houses form commonly a quadrangle, with passages or lanes at
intervals between the buildings, where in the more considerable villages
live the lower class of inhabitants, and where also their padi-houses or
granaries are erected. In the middle of the square stands the balei or
town hall, a room about fifty to a hundred feet long and twenty or thirty
wide, without division, and open at the sides, excepting when on
particular occasions it is hung with mats or chintz; but sheltered in a
lateral direction by the deep overhanging roof.

(PLATE 19. A VILLAGE HOUSE IN SUMATRA.
W. Bell delt. J.G. Stadler sculpt.
Published by W. Marsden, 1810.

PLATE 19a. A PLANTATION HOUSE IN SUMATRA.
W. Bell delt. J.G. Stadler sculpt.)

BUILDINGS.

In their buildings neither stone, brick, nor clay, are ever made use of,
which is the case in most countries where timber abounds, and where the
warmth of the climate renders the free admission of air a matter rather
to be desired than guarded against: but in Sumatra the frequency of
earthquakes is alone sufficient to have prevented the natives from
adopting a substantial mode of building. The frames of the houses are of
wood, the underplate resting on pillars of about six or eight feet in
height, which have a sort of capital but no base, and are wider at top
than at bottom. The people appear to have no idea of architecture as a
science, though mu