They have a diversion similar to that described by Homer as practised among the Phaeacians, which consists in tossing an elastic wicker ball or round basket of split rattans into the air, and from one player to another, in a peculiar manner. This game is called by the Malays sipak raga, or, in the dialect of Bencoolen, chipak rago, and is played by a large party standing in an extended circle, who endeavour to keep up the ball by striking it either perpendicularly, in order to receive it again, or obliquely to some other person of the company, with the foot or the hand, the heel or the toe, the knee, the shoulder, the head, or with any other part of the body; the merit appearing to consist in producing the effect in the least obvious or most whimsical manner; and in this sport many of them attain an extraordinary degree of expertness. Among the plates of Lord Macartney's Embassy will be found the representation of a similar game, as practised by the natives of Cochin-china. SMOKING OF OPIUM. The Sumatrans, and more particularly the Malays, are much attached, in common with many other eastern people, to the custom of smoking opium. The poppy which produces it not growing on the island, it is annually imported from Bengal in considerable quantities, in chests containing a hundred and forty pounds each. It is made up in cakes of five or six pounds weight, and packed with dried leaves; in which situation it will continue good and vendible for two years, but after that period grows hard and diminishes considerably in value. It is of a darker colour, and is supposed to have less strength than the Turkey opium. About a hundred and fifty chests are consumed annually on the west coast of Sumatra, where it is purchased, on an average, at three hundred dollars the chest, and sold again in smaller quantities at five or six. But on occasions of extraordinary scarcity I have known it to sell for its weight in silver, and a single chest to fetch upwards of three thousand dollars. PREPARATION.