Pagan races of the Malay Peninsula - Sabrizain.org

538 DEALINGS WITH OTHER RACES part ii
party intending to return again to the place after a
short interval/
Mantpa.—The Mantra of Malacca have suffered like
other aboriginal tribes from the raids and incursions of
the neighbouring Malays, their most implacable foes
being the members of a Malay tribe called Rawa, This
people are natives of a country in Sumatra called
Rawa, Rau, and Ara, lying immediately to the north
of Menangkabau, and penetrated by the large but
scarcely navigable river Rakan. They are dis-
tinguished for their trading character, and, as traders
and settlers, they have for a long period, but particu-
larly during the last twenty or thirty years, annually
repaired to the Peninsula opposite, sometimes by way
of the Rakan, but more generally by the river Siak.
They are bold, persevering, and thrifty, qualities
which have long enabled them to engross the principal
internal traffic between Malacca and Pahang. They
always go well armed, but the chief source of their
strength is their social spirit, which leads them to
make common cause against those who have injured
any of their nation. They are now settled in con-
siderable numbers in Rembau, Sungei Ujong, and
the western part of Pahang, and their numbers and
power yearly increase and become more formidable.
Seven months before the time of Logan's (present)
memoir, large bands of them, under one Bata Bidohom,
who was reputed invulnerable, attacked the Mantra
in several places, killing many of the men and carrying
away more than a hundred of their women and girls
into Pahang, where they sold them as slaves. The
Rawa declared that they would hunt down the Mantra
everywhere and deal with them all in the same way,
' /. /. A. vol. ii. pji. 280, 281.