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Updated: June 7, 2025
Pacheco stood on to Barus, a place renowned for its gold trade, and for gum benzoin of a peculiar scent, which the country produced. It was much frequented by vessels, both from the neighbouring ports in the island, and from those in the West of India, whence it was supplied with cotton cloths.
The price of this camphor barus as it is termed, is said to be nearly a hundred times as much as that of the ordinary camphor, and it is used by the Chinese and Indians principally for embalming purposes. Billian and other woods enumerated are all found near the coast and, generally, in convenient proximity to some stream, and so easily available for export.
They are, generally speaking, an intelligent, industrious, and active race, the principal cultivators of sago, and gatherers of the famous camphor barus. Their locality extends from Tanjong Barram to Tanjong Sirak. In person they are stout and well-made, of middling height, round good-tempered countenances, and fairer than the Malays.
His successor took the name of Ala-eddin-shah, and afterwards, from his great enterprises, acquired the additional epithet of keher or the powerful. By the Portuguese he is said to have styled himself king of Achin, Barus, Pidir, Pase, Daya, and Batta, prince of the land of the two seas, and of the mines of Menangkabau.
The town is situated about a league from the coast, and two leagues farther inland are eight small villages inhabited by Battas, the inhabitants of which purchase the camphor and benzoin from the people of the Diri mountains, extending from the southward of Singkel to the hill of Lasa, behind Barus, where the Tobat district commences.
Barus, the next place of any consequence to the southward, is chiefly remarkable for having given name throughout the East to the Kapurbarus or native camphor, as it is often termed to distinguish it from that which is imported from Japan and China, as already explained. This was the situation of the most remote of the Dutch factories, long since withdrawn.
In catching these unfortunate victims of avarice it is supposed that not fewer than two hundred are killed; and if the aggregate be computed at one thousand it is a prodigious number to be supplied from the population of so small an island. Numbers of hogs are reared, and some parts of the main, especially Barus, are supplied from hence with yams, beans, and poultry.
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