ong aromatic flavour and other stimulating additions;
a practice that shall be hereafter described. Of both of these the
natives make large plantations.

BAMBOO.

In respect to its numerous and valuable uses the bambu or bamboo-cane
(Arundo bambos) holds a conspicuous rank amongst the vegetables of the
island, though I am not aware that it is anywhere cultivated for domestic
purposes, growing wild in most parts in great abundance. In the Batta
country, and perhaps some other inland districts, they plant a particular
species very thickly about their kampongs or fortified villages as a
defence against the attacks of an enemy; the mass of hedge which they
form being almost impenetrable. It grows in common to the thickness of a
man's leg, and some sorts to that of the thigh. The joints are from
fifteen to twenty inches asunder, and the length about twenty to forty
feet. In all manner of building it is the chief material, both in its
whole state, and split into laths and otherwise, as has already appeared
in treating of the houses of the natives; and the various other modes of
employing it will be noticed either directly or incidentally in the
course of the work.

SUGAR-CANE.

The sugar-cane (tubbu) is very generally cultivated, but not in large
quantities, and more frequently for the sake of chewing the juicy reed,
which they consider as a delicacy, than for the manufacture of sugar. Yet
this is not unattended to for home consumption, especially in the
northern districts. By the Europeans and Chinese large plantations have
been set on foot near Bencoolen, and worked from time to time with more
or less effect; but in no degree to rival those of the Dutch at Batavia,
from whence in time of peace the exportation of sugar (gula), sugar-candy
(gula batu) and arrack is very considerable. In the southern parts of the
island, and particularly in the district of Manna, every village is
provided with two or three machines of a peculiar construction for
squeezing the cane; but the inhabitants are content with boiling the
juice to a kind of syrup. In the Lampong country they manufacture from
the liquor yielded by a species of palm-tree a moist, clammy, imperfect
kind of sugar, called jaggri in most parts of India.*

(*Footnote. This word is evidently the shakar of the Persians, the Latin
saccharum, and our sugar.)

JAGGRI.

This palm, named in Sumatra anau, and by the eastern Malays gomuto, is
the Borassus gomutus of Loureiro,