United States or Bouvet Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"It has but recently become known by Europeans that the leaves of the coffee-plant contain the same essential principle for which the berries are so much valued. In Sumatra, the natives scarcely use anything else. The leaves are cured like tea. And the tree will produce leaves over a much larger habitat than it will berries."
The same may be said of the Harcourt Indiaman, Captain Paul, who sail'd from Batavia soon after our arrival, directly for the Coast of Sumatra; we afterwards heard that she, in a very short time, lost by Sickness above 20 men; indeed, this seem to have been a year of General Sickness over most parts of India, the Ships from Bengal and Madrass bring Melancholly Accounts of the Havock made there by the united force of Sickness and famine.
They had effected a settlement in China, obtained a free trade with the empire of Japan, and received tribute from the rich Islands of Ceylon, Java, and Sumatra.
Tigers are much more easily caught in traps than lions; and those most used, are made so as to fall upon them when they seize the bait. In Sumatra the natives poison the carcasses which are left for them, or they fasten these baits to a stake, or tree, and place a vessel filled with arsenic and water near by, of which the tiger invariably drinks, after making a full meal.
From Bencoolen, I proceeded to Padang, another Dutch settlement, about two hundred miles up the coast of Sumatra. Padang, as its name implies, is situated in a plain, and is a very few feet above the level of the sea; yet, it is a healthy place.
We regard them as Proto-Malays, that is to say, as of the stock from which the true Malays of Sumatra and the Peninsula were differentiated by the influence of Arab culture. A large number of the ancestors of the present Ibans were probably brought to Borneo from Sumatra less than two hundred years ago.
This seems properly enough corrected on the margin by Hakluyt, by the word Comori, or the country about Cape Comorin. Simoltra or Sumatra. Hakluyt. Probably alluding to tatooing, which will be explained in the voyages to the islands of the Pacific ocean. Of certain Trees which produce Meal, Honey, Wine, and Poison.
It is true, that there are peculiar productions in the mineral kingdom which are rare, as being found only in few places; but these things are merely accidental in relation to the land, for they belong in property to those parts of the mineral region which we never see. Such are, the diamond of the east, the platina of the west, and the tin of Cornwall, Germany, and Sumatra.
They passed Krakatoa, and gazed with interest and amazement at the evidences of the awful havoc and ruin that had been wrought by the terrific eruption of '83; and emerged into open water again in time to witness a magnificent sunset behind the mountain of Radja Bassa, on the island of Sumatra.
As early as 1596 Cornelius Houtman rounded the Cape and visited Sumatra and Bantam, and within fifty, years the Dutch had replaced the Portuguese in many of their Eastern possessions. In 1614 they took Malacca, and with it the command of the Spice Islands; by 1658 they had secured full possession of Ceylon.
Word Of The Day