no ideas. Among those discoveries in which we have stepped so far beyond
our masters there is none more striking, or more eminently useful, than
the means which the ingenuity of some, and the experience of others, have
taught mankind, of determining with certainty and precision the relative
situation of the various countries of the earth. What was formerly the
subject of mere conjecture, or at best of vague and arbitrary
computation, is now the clear result of settled rule, founded upon
principles demonstratively just. It only remains for the liberality of
princes and states, and the persevering industry of navigators and
travellers, to effect the application of these means to their proper end,
by continuing to ascertain the unknown and uncertain positions of all the
parts of the world, which the barriers of nature will allow the skill and
industry of man to approach.

SITUATION OF THE ISLAND.

Sumatra, the subject of the present work, is an extensive island in the
East Indies, the most western of those which may be termed the Malayan
Archipelago, and constituting its boundary on that side.

LATITUDE.

The equator divides it obliquely, its general direction being north-west
and south-east, into almost equal parts; the one extremity lying in five
degrees thirty-three minutes north, and the other in five degrees
fifty-six minutes south latitude. In respect to relative position its
northern point stretches into the Bay of Bengal; its south-west coast is
exposed to the great Indian Ocean; towards the south it is separated by
the Straits of Sunda from the island of Java; on the east by the
commencement of the Eastern and China Seas from Borneo and other islands;