# A History of Sarawak under Its Two White Rajahs 1839-1908

C. Bampfylde

PREFACE

As I have been requested to write a preface to The History of Sarawak under its Two White Rajahs, one of whom I have the honour to be, I must, first of all, assert that I have had nothing to do with the composition or writing of the book, and I do not profess to be a writer, otherwise than in a very ordinary sense, having left school at the age of twelve to enter the Navy.

In that service I remained for ten years, when I obtained my lieutenancy, and then received two years' leave, which the Admiralty were glad to grant at that time (about 1852), as they thought naval officers were of a type likely to be of service in the development of the colonies and the improvement of native states. I then went to Sarawak to join my uncle, the first Rajah, with and under whom I remained, and consequently had to retire from the Navy; but I will admit that my ten years' service gave me what I probably could not have gained from any other profession – the advantages of having been taught to obey my seniors, and of having been disciplined; and I very firmly adhere to the rule that no one can make a successful commander unless he has learnt to obey. It further taught me those seafaring qualities, which have been so useful ever since, of being able to rough it and put up with one's surroundings, the lack of which so often makes the men of the present day, in their refined and gentlemanly way, not quite suited to handle the wheel of a ship at sea or the plough on land.

Now I will pass on to say how this book, good or bad as it may be – and I am not competent to pass judgment either way – came to be written. I was asked by more than one if I had any objection to the writing of my biography, and I, as far as I can recollect, gave no decided answer one way or the other; but I thought if I handed over the correspondence and all records that related to Sarawak and its Government that the distinguished author, Baring-Gould, and my friend, Charles Bampfylde, might be enabled to form a truthful account, and at the same time give the public a readable book.

I thought that some interest might be felt in the story of a life such as mine has been for the last sixty years, coupled with an account of the institutions, manners, and customs of the inhabitants of Sarawak, and especially of the way in which we have always treated the native population, finding much profit by it, more in kindliness and sympathy than in a worldly point of view, by making them our friends, and I may say associates, though they are of a different creed and different colour; and how we gained their hearts by living among them and really knowing them, not as superiors, but as equals and friends; and I thought being brought out during my life by the pen of the able author and that of my old and much-esteemed officer, Mr. Bampfylde, it would be more likely to give a correct impression than if some one took up the pen after my death and gained material from some good and some rather scratchy works that have been written on Sarawak, since such an one would probably make up a work that would be, no doubt, very readable and well adapted to take the fashion of the day, but not so truthful as a man of long personal experience could do, and has, I think, done it; and this I can aver, that what is written are facts, however plain and uninteresting they may prove. The work is not the history of my life more than that of the late Rajah, and I may flatter myself that we – he as founder and myself as builder of the state – have been one in our policy throughout, from the beginning up to the present time; and now shortly I have to hand it to my son, and I hope that his policy may not be far removed from that of his predecessors.

My life draws towards its close, but the book, if and whenever brought out, will stand in the future as a record of events that may be considered as the work of private individuals who stood alone and unprotected in a far distant land, and who were, I may also say, fortunately, scarcely ever interfered with, or the policy of Sarawak could not have been as successful as it has proved. It will, I have reason to believe, attract more attention in comparatively new countries, such as America and Australia, where the story of Sarawak is perhaps better known than in England. One word more, and that is, that the native element has always been our base and strong point: and our lives are safe with them so long as they are wisely treated and relied on with thorough trust and confidence.

> C. BROOKE,

> Rajah.

> Chesterton, 8th January 1909.

## TITLES

Sultan. – Supreme head of the once large Bruni Sultanate, which is now only a corner or enclave within the raj of Sarawak. Iang di Pertuan, the Lord who Rules, is the correct supreme title in Bruni, and the one most generally in use.[1]

Sultan Muda, heir-apparent. Lit. young Sultan, but seldom used. Iang di Pertuan Muda is the more correct Malay title. Cp. Pangiran, infra.

Rajah (fem. Rani, or Ranee). – The old title of the Bruni sovereigns. It is a Sanskrit word, and means king. But in Bruni it was improperly assumed by those (male and female) of royal descent. This has fallen into disuse, that is, none of them now bears such a title, but in referring to the princes of Bruni generally the term Rajah Rajah[2] would be used. Rulers of districts were never entitled to the title ex officio. Such rulers are feudal chiefs with the title of Pangiran, and their chieftainship is generally hereditary.

Rajah Muda, heir apparent. Lit. young Rajah.

Pangiran is the highest Bruni title. Pangiran Muda – sometimes Pangiran Muda Besar – is another title of the heir-apparent to the Sultanate. (Rajah Muda is only used in Sarawak.) It is a Javanese title and means prince. It is not, however, now confined only to persons of royal descent as formerly, and the title has become very common, especially as illegitimate as well as legitimate children of all pangirans assume it.

Datu. – Lit. great-grandfather (by extension – ancestor). This is a high title in the Malay Peninsula, and the highest in Sarawak, but not in Bruni, though it is in Sulu. It can be conferred by the Ruler alone, and is an official title and not hereditary. It is only granted to Malays.[3]

Bandar (Persian). – The meaning of this word is a port. Datu Bandar, one of the highest titles in Sarawak, would mean the chief of the port or town.

Shah Bandar means the Controller of the Customs.

Bandahara (Sanskrit.). – A treasurer. The Pangiran Bandahara is the chief of the four Wazirs of Bruni. The present Bandahara is Regent of Bruni.

Temanggong. – Another high official title, meaning Commander-in-Chief. The Pangiran Temanggong is one of the Bruni Wazirs.

Di Gadong and Pemancha. – Also high official titles, the meanings of which are uncertain. The Pangiran di Gadong and the Pangiran Pemancha are the titles of the other two Bruni Wazirs.[4]

Patinggi (from Tinggi – elevated, exalted; hence Maha-tinggi, the most high). The Datu Patinggi was the highest or premier chief in Sarawak.

Penglima. – A Malay title, also sometimes formerly given to Dayaks; means a Commander.

Orang kaya. – Lit. rich man. A title generally given to Malay chiefs of inferior rank and to the Dayak chiefs.

Sherif.[5]– An Arab title meaning noble. A title assumed by half-bred Arabs claiming descent from Muhammad. These men also take the exalted Malay title of Tunku or Tungku[6] by which princes of the royal blood are alone addressed, but more especially the Sultan.

Haji. – One who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca.

Tuan. – Master, Sir, Lord, Mistress, Lady. Tuan Besar – High Lord. Tuan Muda – Young Lord.

Nakoda. – Shipmaster, merchant.

Pengulu. – Headman. A title given to Dayak district chiefs.

Inchi. – Mister – a lower title than Tuan. A title foreign to Sarawak, and in that country only assumed by foreign Malays.

Abang. – Lit. elder brother. Datu's sons are styled Abang, and also Malay Government chiefs below the rank of Datu.

Laksamana. – An Admiral.

Imaum. – High Priest.

Hakim. – A Judge: lit. a learned man.

Awang. – A title sometimes given to the sons of Pangirans.

Dayang or Dang. – Lady of rank. A title given to daughters of Datus and Abangs.

Wan. – Another title given to Sherifs, but more generally to their sons. It is probably derived from the Arabic word Awan, meaning a helper or sustainer of Muhammad.

The following Malay geographical terms should also be noted: —

> Bukit, a hill.

> Danau, a lake.

> Gunong, a mountain.

> Pulau, an island.

> Sungi, a river.

> Tanjong, a cape.

> Kampong, a village, or subdivision of a town, a parish.

## CHAPTER I. BORNEO

Next to Australia and New Guinea, Borneo[7] is the largest island in the world; it is larger than the whole of France. It sits astride on the equator, that divides it nearly, but not wholly, in two; the larger portion being to the north of the Line.

The belt of islands, Sumatra, Java, and the chain to Timor and the Sarwatty group, represents a line of weakness in the crust of the earth, due to volcanic action, which still makes itself felt there. But the axis of elevation of Borneo is almost at right angles to this line, and in it are no active vents, and if there be extinct volcanoes, these are in the extreme north only. In Sarawak there are several hot springs, the water of which is impregnated with sulphuretted hydrogen. The island owes its origin, as far as we can judge, to a great upheaval of plutonic rock that has lifted aloft and shivered the overlying beds, but the granite does not come everywhere to the surface. Something analogous may be seen in Exmoor, where the superincumbent clay-slate has been heaved up and strained, but the granite nowhere shows save in Lundy Isle, where the superposed strata have been swept away, leaving the granite exposed.

Borneo is about 850 miles in length and 600 in breadth, and contains an area of 286,000 square miles. The centre of Borneo is occupied by broken hilly highland, with isolated mountains, of which the finest is the granite peak of Kina Balu (13,700 feet). Hills come down in places to the sea, as in the south of Sarawak, where they attain a height of from 2000 to over 5000 feet, and die into the sea at Cape Datu. The plains, chiefly swamps, are composed of the wash of the mountains, overlaid by vegetable mould, and these fringe the coast, extending inland from ten to thirty miles, with here and there isolated humps of hill standing up out of them.

The island is probably the best watered in the world. On every side are numerous rivers, mainly rising in the central highlands, at first dancing down the mountain ledges in cascades, then, forming dangerous rapids, enter the plain, and there swelled by affluents and widening out advance with no strong current to the sea. Owing to the width of the river-mouths, and to the configuration of the coast, some of them, as the Batang Lupar, the Sadong, and Saribas, have tidal bores, as is the case with our River Severn, that run up as many as seventy miles into the interior, and most have deposited troublesome bars at their mouths, and have embouchures clogged by shoals. To the slight fall is largely due the remarkable way in which several of these rivers descend into the ocean through plural mouths, thus forming a network of lateral waterways, called Loba and Trusan, whereby they mix and mingle with other rivers, and, very much like the Rhine after entering Holland, lose their identity and are frittered away in many channels. The Rejang, for instance, finds issue through five mouths, and the land between the Rejang and Igan entrances, which meet at Sibu, the apex of the delta, is a vast unbroken swamp, 1200 square miles in area. The same phenomenon is noticed in the Sarawak river, and in the Limbang to a smaller degree.

The rainfall in Borneo is so great, the rainy season lasting from October to April,[8] that the rivers are very numerous and copious, rolling down large volumes of water. Severe droughts are, however, not uncommon during the fine season of the S.W. monsoon.

Between Kuching and Bruni are the Sadong, Batang Lupar, Saribas, Kalaka, Rejang, Bintulu, and the Baram rivers, all available as waterways for trade with the interior. For fifteen miles only from its mouth is the Batang Lupar navigable by steamers, above that, though a fine broad river, it is obstructed by dangerous shoals. The Rejang is navigable by steamers for 170 miles, nearly as far as the first rapids. This noble river descends many stages by as many plunges from terraces. Between the rapids the river is deep, sluggish and broad for many miles. Boats that can be hauled up past the rapids can ascend a distance of 650 miles from the mouth. The Baram river is navigable by steamers for some twenty miles above Claude Town, that is, eighty miles from the mouth, but owing to the exposed position of the bar and to the heavy seas breaking over it, and also to the silting up of the mouth during the N.E. monsoon, only very small craft can then enter, but during the S.W. monsoon it can be entered by steamers of light draught.

In Dutch Borneo as well there are magnificent rivers. The same cause that has made some of the rivers so uncertain in their mouths has produced vast stretches of morass, overgrown with the nipah palm and mangrove, and infested with mosquito swarms; but the beach is almost everywhere of beautiful white sand, reaching to where the graceful casuarina tree grows as a belt above the reach of the tide. The tropical heat, added to the great rainfall, makes Borneo a vegetable paradise; indeed, it presents the appearance of one vast surface of sombre evergreen forest, starred with flowering orchids, and wreathed with creepers, of a richness perhaps unsurpassed even in South America.

The hills and ranges of upland consist of blue metamorphic limestone on which is superposed a thick series of sandstones, conglomerates, and clay-shales. Piercing these beds are granite and a variety of plutonic rocks, as diorite, porphyrite, etc. These latter are developed in greatest abundance in the antimony districts, where they are in immediate contact with the limestone that has been fissured and tortured by upheaval. The sandstone shales have also been tilted and distorted; nevertheless in places they retain their original horizontal position. They are usually found to be impregnated with peroxide of iron. It is in this formation that the cinnabar deposits occur.

Both lime and sandstone have been extensively denuded, and the latter rises in isolated tabular mountains, or short peaky trends, to an altitude occasionally of 1500 feet above the sea, the ridges separated by undulating valleys, in which the limestone comes to the surface. Sometimes these denuded masses form low hilly tracts varying in elevation from 200 feet to 1200 feet; sometimes they appear as solitary crags, but invariably present long lines of ancient sea-cliff, and bold scarped faces, fissured and jointed in every conceivable direction.

In the intervening lowlands is a deposit of dark yellow felspathic clay varying in depth from a few feet to eighty feet and more, derived from the degradation of the hills by water. Associated with this clay and of more recent date are superficial deposits of pudding-stone and river gravels. The intrusive igneous rocks show mainly in the form of dykes, seaming the stratified rocks; consequently volcanic action took place subsequent to their deposition, but it was also antecedent to the more recent of the superficial deposits. It is in immediate connection with those plutonic dykes that we find the deposits of arsenic and cinnabar, occupying the fissures produced in the stratified rocks by volcanic upheavals, and we are led to the conclusion that these mineral lodes were deposited after the cessation of the upheaval.

Gold occurs in the form of fine sand in the alluvial deposits, and in the gravel of the rivers over a great part of Sarawak; and also in pockets of the limestone, in which it has been allowed to fall by water. Nuggets are of extremely rare occurrence, but Sir Spencer St. John mentions having seen one of seven ounces taken from the auriferous clay at Krian near Bau. The gold dust is usually in a state of finest comminution. So far no gold reef has been come upon.

In former days gold was extensively washed by Chinese at Bau and Paku in Upper Sarawak, which auriferous district commences at the confluence of the two branches of the Sarawak river, and extends back to their sources and the boundary of Dutch Borneo. As gold and antimony were known to abound here, the Chinese of Sambas and the lower Kapuas had made several endeavours to establish themselves in the district, but were much harassed by the Malays until the accession of the late Rajah Brooke, which made it possible for them to settle there and pursue in peace their business of gold mining. Then gold was washed extensively, and the fine reservoirs and "leats" which the Chinese constructed to sluice the alluvial soil remain to this day. They increased and became a thriving community, but they were not sufficiently looked after, and, falling under the machinations of socialistic Secret Societies, gradually got out of hand and broke into open rebellion in 1857, as shall be related in the sequel. It is sufficient to say here that this ended in dire ruin to themselves, and that the few who escaped were driven over the borders; but it also ruined the gold-mining industry, and, though some of the rebels returned and others came with them, the industry never fully recovered, and later on it received a further check by the introduction of pepper planting, which gave the Chinese a more profitable occupation, and gradually Upper Sarawak became covered with gardens of this description. Though gold mining under the Chinese practically died out, modern scientific and engineering skill has now placed it in a far higher position than it had ever previously attained, or could have attained under the primitive methods of the previous workers.

Quicksilver was discovered in situ about the year 1871, by Messrs. Helms and Walters of the Borneo Company, who prospected over the whole of Sarawak Proper, and ultimately succeeded in tracking the small fragments of cinnabar that are scattered over the district to a hill on the right bank of the Staat river. The hill is called Tegora, and rises to an elevation of 800 feet. In the upper portion of this hill, the ore was found deposited capriciously in strains and pockets with here and there a little metallic mercury.[9]

In former years a large quantity of quicksilver was exported, but for some time this mineral product has ceased to appear as an item in the exports, the large deposit of cinnabar at Tegora having apparently been worked out. The existence of this mineral in other parts of the state is proved by traces found in several places, and the same may be said of antimony, of which there are indications of rich deposits; but the discovery of these minerals in paying quantities is a matter of chance. Antimony is still worked by the Borneo Company, Ltd., and a recent rise in the price has been an inducement to Chinese and Malay miners to increase the production, and the export of 1906 was more in quantity than it was in 1905, though small as compared with what it used to be.

Black bituminous coal, which occurs in the Tertiary strata, has been found in different parts, and two collieries are owned and worked by the Government, at Semunjan in the Sadong district, and at Brooketon. Several hundred Chinese are employed as miners under European supervision, and large sums have been expended upon machinery, etc.

Oil, a crude petroleum, has been discovered in two places; it is of good quality, and is an excellent lubricant.

It is not impossible, or indeed improbable, that diamond deposits in Sarawak will be found and exploited. No systematic operations in search of these precious stones have been attempted, the dense jungle which covers the country being an obstacle. The only people who wash for diamonds are the Malays, and these carry on their work in a very desultory and imperfect manner.

But agriculture and jungle produce have been, and will be, the main source of revenue to Sarawak, and prosperity to the country. We shall deal with these products, as well as with those that are mineral, more fully in a subsequent chapter.

> The Bornean forest is so varied and so different at different hours and seasons that no description can possibly convey an adequate idea of it to those who have not known it. Infinite and ever changing are its aspects, as are the treasures it hides. Its beauties are as inexhaustible as the varieties of its productions. In the forest man feels singularly free. The more one wanders in it, the greater grows the sense of profound admiration before nature in one of its grandest aspects. The more one endeavours to study it, the more one finds in it to study. Its deep shades are sacred to the devotee of Science. Yet they afford ample food for the mind of the believer, not less than to that of the philosopher.[10]

And we would add, to the superstitious native, to whom the jungles teem with ghosts and spirits.

The Bornean jungles are full of life, and of the sounds of life, which are more marked in the early mornings and in the evenings. Birds are plentiful (there are some 800 species), some of beautiful plumage, but few are songsters. Insect life is very largely represented, and includes many varieties of the curious stick and leaf insects,[11] hardly to be distinguished from the twigs and leaves they mimic. Also the noisy and never tiring cicadas, whose evening concerts are almost deafening, and frogs and grasshoppers who help to swell the din. There are many varieties of beautiful butterflies, but these are to be found more in the open clearings. Though there are no dangerous animals, there are many pests, the worst being the leeches, of which there are three kinds, two that lurk in the grass and bushes, the other being aquatic – the horse-leech. Mosquitoes, stinging flies, and ants are common, and the scorpion and centipede are there as well. Snakes, though numerous, are rarely seen, for they swiftly and silently retire on the approach of man, and one variety only, the hamadryad, the great cobra or snake-eating snake, is said to be aggressive. The varieties of land and water snakes are many, there being some 120 different species. Natives often fall victims to snake bites. Pythons attain a length of over twenty feet;[12] they seldom attack man, though instances have been known of people having been killed by these reptiles, and the following story, taken from the Sarawak Gazette, will show how dangerous they can be. At a little village a man and his small son were asleep together. In the middle of the night the child shrieked out that he was being taken by a crocodile, and the father, to his horror, found that a snake had closed its jaws on the boy's head. With his hands he prised the reptile's jaws open and released his son; but in his turn he had to be rescued by some neighbours, for the python had wound itself around his body. Neither was much hurt.

Of the wild animals in Sarawak, wild cattle and the rhinoceros have nearly disappeared before their ruthless destroyer, man; and such would have been the fate of that huge, though harmless, anthropoid, the maias, or "orang-utan," at the hands of collectors, had not the Government placed a check upon them by limiting the number each may collect.[13] Deer, the sambur, the muntjac or barking deer, and the little mouse-deer, and also wild pig, of which there are several species, abound.[14] Numerous too are the monkeys and apes, and numerous are the species; the more peculiar of the former being the proboscis monkey, a species confined to Borneo, and of the latter the gentle gibbons, who announce the dawn, making the woods ring and echo with their melodious gurgling whoops. There are two kinds of diminutive bears, the tree-leopard, wild cat, the scaly ant-eater, the porcupine, the otter, the lemur, and other small animals, including the flying fox, flying squirrel, flying lizard, flying frog, a peculiar kind of rat with a tail which bears a close resemblance to a feather,[15] and huge toads nine inches in height.[16] But to the casual traveller in the dense jungle with but a limited view, excepting an occasional monkey, or a pig or deer startled from its lair, few of these animals will be visible.

Of the valuable products of the jungle it will be sufficient to note here that gutta, camphor, cutch, and dammar-producing trees abound; also creepers from which rubber is extracted; and rattans of various kinds. There are trees from the nuts of which excellent oil is expressed; and many kinds of useful woods, some exceeding hard and durable, and some ornamental.

Man's greatest enemy is the crocodile, and this voracious saurian becomes a dangerous foe when, driven perhaps by scarcity of other food, it has once preyed upon man, for, like the tiger, it then becomes a man-hunter and man-eater. It will lurk about landing and bathing-places for prey; will snatch a man bodily from a boat; and one has been known to seize a child out of its mother's arms while she was bathing it. The Sarawak Gazette records numerous deaths due to crocodiles, though by no means all that happen, and many thrilling adventures with these reptiles. Two we will give as interesting instances of devotion and presence of mind. A little Malay boy, just able to toddle, was larking in the mud at low water when he was seized by a crocodile, which was making for the water with its screaming little victim in its jaws, when the child's sister, a girl of twelve, and his brother of eight, rushed to his assistance. The boy hopelessly tried to stop the crocodile by clinging to one of its fore-paws, but the girl jumped upon the brute's back, and gradually working her way to its eyes which were then just above water, succeeded in gouging out one with her fingers. This caused the crocodile promptly to drop its prey, but only just in time, as it was on the point of gliding into deep water. By the girl's vigorous intervention it not only lost its prey but also its life, for two men coming up hacked the brute to pieces. The little heroine had remembered the story of how her grandfather had formerly saved his life in the same way. To scoop out the eyes is the only chance of escape for one taken, and it must be done promptly. The little boy was scarcely hurt. The girl's courageous deed duly received a graceful recognition from the Ranee.

Another girl, a Dayak girl this time, rescued her mother, who was dragged out of a boat, in which they were together, by a large crocodile. She threw herself upon the monster, and by thrusting her fingers into its eyes compelled the brute, after a short but sharp struggle, to release its prey.

Death caused by a crocodile is one of the most horrible of deaths, and it is often a protracted one, as the victim is borne along above water for some distance, then taken down, bashed against some sunken log, and brought up again. "May I be killed by a crocodile if I am guilty" is a common invocation made by Malays in protestation of their innocence; in other words, they invoke the most dreadful death that comes within their ken. So did once a young Malay woman in the Simanggang Court on being convicted of a serious crime. That evening, whilst she was bathing, a smothered cry, that she had barely time to utter, announced that her prayer had been heard.

There are several kinds of crocodiles, broad and long snouted. In the Perak Museum is a specimen nearly twenty-five feet in length, but the longest that has been caught in Sarawak, and authentically measured, was nineteen feet. The Government gives a reward for killing these pests, which is paid upon some 250 to 300 annually brought to the police station at Kuching. More are killed in the various districts of which no record is kept.

Sharks of several species abound, but cases of injury by these are very rare.

Saw-fish are also common, and with their long spiny saws are dangerous creatures. A fisherman was killed by one of these at the mouth of the Sadong; he was in a small canoe when the fish, which he had cut at with his knife, struck him a blow on his neck with its saw, from which he died almost immediately.

Excellent fish are abundant, such as mackerel and herring, considerably larger than the English varieties, pomfret, barbel, soles, mullets, etc., and some of beautiful colours; also crabs, prawns, and oysters. The dugong (Malay duyong), the sea-cow, is rare in Sarawak, but common in North Borneo, as is also the whale; in Sarawak the latter are occasionally stranded on the beach. Turtles abound; these are preserved for the sake of their eggs, which are considered a great delicacy.

We will now consider the races that occupy Sarawak territory; and the following brief ethnological notes with regard to those of Indonesian stock will be all that is necessary for the purposes of this book; to attempt anything like an accurate classification of the many tribes and sub-tribes which differentiate the heterogeneous population of the country would be beyond its scope, even were it possible to trace the divergence of the cognate tribes from the original stock, and of the sub-tribes from the tribes. That there may have been earlier inhabitants of Borneo than those now existing in the island is possible. Traces of neolithic man have been found, but these may be due to the first settlers having brought with them stone weapons cherished as charms. Of paleolithic man not a trace has been discovered.[17] To attempt to determine the flow of mankind into the country, or to decide which of the tribes of Indonesian stock now found in Sarawak was the first to occupy the soil, is to undertake an impossible task.[18] It may be accepted that the most barbarous peoples, the Ukits, Bukitans, Punans, and other fast vanishing tribes, were the earliest inhabitants of whom we know anything, and that they were immigrants. But whence they came we know not. These tribes are all more or less related in language and customs, and in Borneo difference in names does not always denote any essential racial distinction.

As an instance of this we have the Lugats, of whom only a very few are left, the Lisums, the Bliuns, a tribe that has quite died out, the Segalangs, and the Seru Dayaks of the Kalaka, a tribe which is fast disappearing. The above sub-tribes take their name from rivers widely apart, and though their names differ they are of the same race, sub-tribes of the Ukits. Their tradition is that three or four hundred years ago the Ukits lived in the Lugat (now the Gat) river, a branch of the Baleh (hence we have the Lugats now living in the Anap), but they were driven out by the Kayans. Some went to the Lisum river (hence we have the Lisums), and some to Kapit, where they built strong houses on the site of the present fort, but these they were eventually forced to evacuate, and again they migrated down river, first to Tujong, near the Kanowit, and afterwards farther down again to Bunut, by Benatang. From Bunut they were driven out by their implacable foes, and they dispersed to Segalang (in the Rejang delta), to Bliun (in the Kanowit), and to Seru in the Kalaka.[19] This tradition is supported by the strong evidence of language, and there is little reason for disregarding it. After being driven out of Lugat, some of the Ukits went over to the Kapuas, where, as in the Baleh, to which river some eventually returned, they are still known as Ukits. The Bliuns, Segalangs, and Serus became civilised owing to contact with the Malays and Melanaus. The Ukits, Bukitans, and Punans, with the exception of the Punan Bah of Balui, are the wildest of all the races in the island. The Ukits are light in complexion; tall and well knit, and better looking than other inland tribes. Formerly they did not reside in houses, or cultivate the soil, but roamed about in the jungle, and subsisted on wild fruit and the animals they killed. But some of these have begun to erect poor dwellings, and do a little elementary farming. They are expert with the blow-pipe, and in the manufacture of the upas-poison, with which the points of their needle-like arrows are tinged. But it is quite open to question whether these poor savages may not be a degenerate race, driven from their homes and from comparative civilisation by more powerful races that followed and hunted them from their farms to the jungle. Beccari (op. cit. p. 363) says that they "are savages in the true name of the word, but they are neither degraded nor inferior races in the series of mankind. Their primitive condition depends more than anything else on their nomadic or wandering life, and on the ease with which they live on the produce of the forests, and on that of the chase which the sumpitan (blow-pipe) procures for them. This has no doubt contributed to keep them from associating with their fellow-beings, and from settling in villages or erecting permanent houses. I believe that these, although they must be considered as the remnants of an ancient Bornean people, are not descended from autochthonous savages, but are rather the present-day representatives of a race which has become savage." And Beccari is of opinion "that it is difficult to deny that Borneo has had older and perhaps more primitive inhabitants." The natives have legends of former races having occupied the land; the most powerful were, according to the Punans, the Antu-Jalan, who lived in the Balui, around the mouth of the Belaga, where the fort of that name now stands. They disappeared, but have now returned in the persons of the white men. So the Punans believe, and other tribes hug other myths. These savage people are, or rather were, the bitter enemies of the Dayaks, and a terror to them. Silently and unperceived, they would steal on their hereditary enemies whilst these latter were collecting jungle produce, or employed on their farms, and wound them to death with their poisoned arrows.

In former days, when they were more powerful, the Bukitans would openly attack the Dayaks, and as late as 1856 they destroyed one of the large communal Dayak houses on the Krian, and also attacked the Serikei Dayaks. The Ukits do not take heads, and the Punans do not tattoo. The latter and the Bukitans are clever makers of rattan mats, which are in demand by Europeans and Chinese. The Ukits and the Bukitans reside on the upper waters of the Rejang, Baleh, and Kapuas; and the Punans in the Baram and Balui.

The Banyoks and the Seduans are, like the Segalangs, with whom they have intermixed, probably off-shoots of the Ukit tribe. They have recently merged, and occupy the same village in the Rejang below Sibu fort. Like the Tanjongs and the Kanowits they are clever basket makers.

The Sians, another off-shoot of the Ukits, live below Belaga fort.[20]

All these small tribes inhabiting the interior, though a few are found near the coast, are dwindling away, mainly in consequence of in-and-in breeding. Of some of the tribes of the same stock only a few families are left, and in others only a few people, while one or two have totally disappeared within quite recent years.

The next Indonesian tribes to follow were the Kayans and then the Kenyahs, two that are closely allied, and both, according to tradition, came from the south, probably from the Celebes. They took possession of the Belungan (or Batang Kayan) river-basin, and overflowed into those of Baram and Balui (the right hand branch of the Rejang). These powerful tribes found these river-basins unoccupied except by scattered families of the tribes above mentioned, whom they drove into the jungle. In the Baram they remained undisturbed, as also in the Rejang till recent years. Down the latter river they spread as far as Kapit; at that time both the Sea-Dayaks and Malays were there, and over them the Kayans domineered, driving the former from their settlements at Ngmah,[21] and harassing the latter in the Kanowit, and even in the Sekrang. Eventually, however, the Kayans were forced to fall back before the ever increasing Dayaks, and to retire to the head-waters of the Balui, and now, with the exception of one small settlement, all reside above the Belaga.

When we consider the large area occupied by the tribes of Kayans and Kenyahs, who may be classed together, it will be seen how important they are. Besides inhabiting the upper waters of the Baram and Rejang, they are found in very large numbers on the Batang Kayan. The Mahkam (Koti or Coti) is also thickly inhabited by Kayans, and many live on the Barito (Banjermasin), and on the Kapuas. The Kayans and Kenyahs are tattooed, as are most of the savage people of Indonesian origin in the interior. When the children are young the lobes of the ears are pierced, and by the insertion of heavy lead or copper rings the lobes become gradually so distended as to hang down to the shoulders, and, with elderly women, often lower. That this is a very old custom, and not peculiar to these people, is shown by the sculptures in the ancient Boro Budor temple in Java, where men and women are figured with such elongated ear lobes, having ear pendants and plugs exactly similar to those in use by the Kayans and Kenyahs. Most Indonesian tribes of the interior retain this fashion.[22] These Kayans and Kenyahs are on a slightly higher grade of civilisation than the Sea-Dayaks, building finer houses, having more rule and order among themselves, and being expert in the manufacture of excellent weapons, extracting their iron for that purpose from the native ore. In character they are vindictive and cruel, but brave, and not without some good qualities. Formerly they practised hideous cruelties on their captives and slaves, and impalement was a common form of punishment. The women were even more barbarous than the men, being the most ingenious and inhuman in devising tortures. The Kayans under Sarawak rule have been checked in these matters, and human sacrifices have become a thing of the past. But that these propensities are only dormant is instanced by a case that occurred but a few years ago, far up the Balui. Four young Dayaks, survivors of a party of gutta-percha collectors, who had been cut off and killed by the Punans, after wandering for many days in the jungle, arrived destitute and starving at a Kayan house, and asked for food and shelter. Instead, the Kayans bound the young men, and, after breaking their legs and arms, handed them over to the women, who slowly despatched them by hacking them to pieces with little knives. And in the Baram, in 1882, a Kayan chief caused two captives to be bound and thrown down from the lofty verandah of his house to the ground, where they were decapitated – quite in Ashantee manner.[23]

Among the Kayans and Kenyahs a broad distinction exists between the classes. There are but the chiefs and their families, and only serfs and slaves under them. The chiefs are not chosen by the people, as is the case among the Dayaks. They assume their position by right of birth, or by might. The position of the serf is little better than that of the slave, and all they may gain by their industry is seized by the chiefs. It is the difference that existed in Germany between the Freie and the Unfreie; in England in Saxon times between the thegn and the villein. Although the Kayans take heads in warfare, they do not value them as do the Dayaks, and will part with them to the latter; and they are not head-hunters in the strict sense of the term. The Kayans are a decreasing race, not so the Kenyahs. Both are capable of improvement, especially the latter; and they are improving, notably in the Baram, where they are directly under the control of the Government, since that river district was ceded to Sarawak in 1883.

The Tanjongs, Kanowits, Kajamans, and Sekapans,[24] are cognate tribes, probably of the same stock as the Kayans and Kenyahs. Formerly they were large tribes, but are now each reduced to a solitary village. They are to be found only on the Rejang. The dialects of the two first are intermediary between those of the Melanaus and the Kayans, and they live in an intermediary position. The other two tribes live close to Belaga fort in the Kayan country; their dialects vary.

The Malohs of Kapuas in Dutch Borneo formerly had a large village at Kanowit, but nearly all have returned to their own country, and the tribe is now represented by a sprinkling only among the Sea-Dayaks. They are wonderfully skilled workers in brass and copper, and manufacture the peculiar brass corsets worn by the Sea-Dayak women, and their armlets, anklets, leg and ear-rings, and other personal ornaments; and they have been known to turn their talents to making counterfeit coin. They bear a great reputation for bravery, and are dangerous men to cross.

The Lanans live amongst the Kayans, to whom they are allied, in the Balui, and have seven or eight villages.

The Sebops and Madangs are Kenyah sub-tribes.

The Melanau, a large and most important tribe inhabiting the coast between Kedurong point and the mouths of the Rejang, is also of Indonesian stock, though, like the Malays, but in a lesser degree, they are of mixed breed. In speech these people are allied to the Kayans, and are regarded by some as a branch tribe. Certain of their customs are similar, and if they differ from the Kayans in many respects, this is due partly to environment, but mainly to the majority of them having embraced Muhammadanism, and to their having intermarried with the Malays, with whom they are now to a certain extent assimilated in customs. They cultivate sago on a large scale, and since the exit of their old Bruni rulers – or rather oppressors – are able to enjoy the fruits of their labour, and have increased their plantations considerably. At Bruit, Matu, Oya, Muka,[25] and Bintulu, there are jungles of sago palms, and these places supply by far the largest proportion of the world's consumption of sago. The people being industrious and thrifty are well off. The above-named places are now large towns, and Muka is as large as Bruni. The Melanaus are skilled in working iron, are good carpenters, and excellent boat builders. Though they are by nature, like the cognate Kayans, vindictive and quarrelsome, serious crime is not common among them, and they are a law-abiding people. Formerly among the Kayans and Melanaus when one of their houses was about to be built, a hole was dug in the ground, a slave woman together with some beads placed in it, and the first iron-wood supporting post was levered up, and then driven through her into the ground. This was an oblation to the Earth Spirit.

The Kadayans do not appear to be allied to any of the races in N.W. Borneo; those in Sarawak have migrated from Bruni within recent times to escape oppression. They are a peaceful and agricultural race, and many of them are Muhammadans.[26]

The Muruts and Bisayas are considerable tribes inhabiting the Limbang, Trusan, and Lawas rivers in Sarawak, and beyond. They are of Indonesian stock, and of them a full and interesting account has been given by Sir Spenser St. John in his Life in the Forests of the Far East.

The heads of all these tribes are dolichocephalic or boat-shaped. They are yellow-stained, with hair either straight or slightly waved.

The Land-Dayaks, so named by Europeans in consequence of their not being accustomed to go to sea, or even to the use of boats, either for trading or piratical purposes, number several tribes, with some variations in language. They occupy localities up the rivers Sadong, Samarahan, Sarawak, and Lundu. The remains found among them of Hinduism, such as a stone-shaped bull,[27] and other carved monumental stones, and the name of their deity, Jewata, as also the refusal among them to touch the flesh of cattle and deer, and the cremation of their dead, show that they must have been brought into intimate contact with the Hindus, probably at the time when the Hindu-Javanese Empire of Majapahit extended to Borneo.[28] In customs and appearance they differ considerably from the other tribes. They have a tradition that they arrived from the north in large ships, possibly from Siam or Cochin-China. Having been oppressed and persecuted and hunted for their heads by the Sea-Dayaks they have retreated to the tops of hills and rocky eminences.

Of the Land-Dayak Captain the Hon. H. Keppel[29] says: —

> In character he is mild and tractable, hospitable when he is well used, grateful for kindness, industrious, honest, and simple; neither treacherous nor cunning, and so truthful that the word of one of them might safely be taken before the oath of half a dozen Borneans (Malays). In their dealings they are very straightforward and correct, and so trustworthy that they rarely attempt, even after a lapse of years, to evade payment of a just debt. On the reverse of this picture there is little unfavourable to be said, and the wonder is that they have learned so little deceit and falsehood where the examples before them have been so rife.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible now, to assign the position of the Land-Dayaks with regard to the other native peoples. Their language is quite different from the others, and in many other essentials they differ.

Distinct from all these races in physical character and language are the Sea-Dayaks. These are proto-Malays, that is to say they belong to the same ethnic family, but represent that stock in a purer, less mixed stage. Radically their language is the same as the Malay. They are brachycephalic, bullet-headed, with more or less flattened noses, are straight-haired, almost beardless, with skin of olive hue, or the colour of new fallen leaves. They migrated from the west, probably from Sumatra, at a period previous to the conversion of the Malays to Islam, for their language, which with slight dialectic differences, is purely Malay, contains no Arabic except of very recent introduction. The Sea-Dayak inhabits the Batang Lupar, Saribas, Kalaka, and Rejang rivers. They are gradually spreading into the rivers of the north-east, and there are now a good many in the Oya, Muka, Tatau, and Baram districts.

A Sea-Dayak is a clean built man, upright in gait, not tall, the average height being 5 ft. 3 inches. The nose is somewhat flat, the hair straight with no curl in it. The face is generally pleasing from the frankness and good nature that show in it. The women have good figures, light and elastic; well-formed busts, with interesting, indeed often pretty, faces; the skins are, as already stated, of so light a brown as to be almost yellow. They have lustrous dark eyes and black, straight hair.

The Dayaks are very fond of their parents, brothers, sisters, and of their children, and often a strong attachment exists between man and wife that lasts for life. The Dayaks have each but one wife, but it does not follow by any means that the first union lasts. A young couple may find incompatibility of temper after a week or two, and the union is dissolved on the plea of a dream inimical to its continuance.

Incest is considered to be the worst of crimes, bringing a curse on the country. Both incest and bigamy were formerly punishable by a cruel death, now by heavy fines, but for the former offence the fine is far heavier than for the latter.

The Sea-Dayaks are most hospitable, indeed a breach of hospitality is regarded as a punishable offence. They obtained their designation from the English who first came in contact with them, on account of their skill in navigating the sea along the coast, although living inland, and to differentiate them from the Dayaks of Sarawak proper, who were styled Land-Dayaks, because these latter were inexpert boatmen, and very few of them could paddle or swim. As shown farther on, Dayak really signifies an inland man.

The Sea-Dayak is now the dominant race in Sarawak, and in time will become so over the whole of the north-west of Borneo. The spread of this stock in former years appears to have been slow, owing to continual intestine wars, but since the advent of the white man, the discontinuance of these feuds, and the forced adoption of a peaceable life, these people have increased enormously in numbers. Fifty years ago there were but few of them to be found outside the Batang Lupar, Saribas, and Kalaka river-basins, but now, though the population on these rivers has grown considerably, it is less than that of the same race on the Rejang alone, and they are spreading into the Oya, Muka, Tatau, and Baram river-basins. The Melanau population of the two first-named rivers live entirely either on the coast or near to it, and the Dayaks found the upper reaches unoccupied.

The Sea-Dayaks have many good qualities that are more or less lacking in the other inland tribes. They are industrious, honest and thrifty, sober and cheerful, and comparatively moral. But the characteristics that mainly distinguish them are energy and independence. They are exceedingly sensitive, especially the women, and will seek refuge from shame in suicide;[30] like the Malays the men will sometimes, though not often, amok when suffering from depression caused by grief, shame, or jealousy, for in the East this peculiar form of insanity is by no means confined to the Malay as is popularly supposed.[31] Amongst them general social equality exists, and it is extended to their women. They do not suffer their chiefs to abuse their powers as the Kayan and Kenyah chiefs are allowed to do, but they are quite ready to submit to them when justness and uprightness is shown. They are superstitious and restless, and require a firm hand over them, and, "being like truant children, take a great advantage of kindness and forbearance, and become more rebellious if threats are not carried into execution." This was the advice given by the present Rajah to the Netherland officials some years ago. Their inherited desire for human skulls, and their old savage methods of obtaining them, still, in a degree, have a strong hold on the Sea-Dayak character, but against this it can be said to their credit that they are free from cruelty, and never torture a captive as do the Kayans and other tribes. They are kindly to their captives, and treat them as members of the family; and they were a peaceable people before they were led astray by the half-bred Arabs and the Malays.

The Sea-Dayaks are the collectors of jungle produce, in search of which they go on expeditions far into the interior – to Sumatra, the Malayan States, and North Borneo – and are away for months at a time.

The Dayak custom of head-hunting is founded on the same principle as that of scalp-hunting among the North-American Indians. A young man formerly found it difficult to obtain a wife till he had got at least one head to present to the object of his heart as token of his prowess; but it was quite immaterial whether the head was that of man or woman, of old or young. If a Dayak had lost a near relative it became his duty to obtain a head, for until this was accomplished, and a head feast had been given, the family must remain in mourning, and the departed relative would have no attendant in Sembayan (the shades); and so in the event of a chief dying it was incumbent upon the warriors of the tribe to procure one or more heads, in order that his spirit should be properly attended by the spirits of those sacrificed in his honour. Thus head-hunting became more or less a natural instinct, and an obligatory duty.

The ancient Chinese jars,[32] held in great esteem among the natives, and very highly prized, being supposed to be possessed of supernatural powers and healing virtues,[33] are of various kinds and value. The Gusi is the most valued, and is treated with great care and veneration, and stands about eighteen inches high. Then comes the Lingka, then the Benaga,[34] about two feet high, ornamented with the Chinese dragon. The Rusa[35] is the least valued. From a note made in 1890 these are the lowest prices they fetch – Gusi tuak, $1000; Gusi bulan, $700; Gusi chendanum, $500; Galagiau, $400; Lingka, $310; Rusa, $150, In 1890 $7 = £1. These jars are all brown in colour. The Dayaks and Kayans possess a few fine blue and white, and pink and white, old Chinese jars, some over five feet in height.

About forty years ago an enterprising Chinese petty dealer took samples of the jars to China and had clever imitations made. He realised a large sum by the sale, and started as a merchant on a large scale, grew rich, waxed fat, and became the leading and wealthiest Chinese merchant in Kuching. The Malays are clever in "faking" jars, especially such as are cracked, but the Dayaks are not now to be deceived by them.

The Dayak village, like those of all interior tribes, is a communal establishment. It does not consist of separate huts occupied by any one family, but of large common halls on platforms, sometimes 800 ft. long, upon which the dwelling-rooms abut. They are constructed of wood, and are supported on poles sometimes 20 ft. to 40 ft. above the ground, the poles being from 6 to 18 inches in diameter. The largest will contain some 300 people. The following is a description of the Dayak village of Tunggang from the late Rajah's journal: —

> Tunyang[36] stands on the left hand (going up) close to the margin of the stream, and was enclosed by a slight stockade. Within this defence there was one enormous house for the whole population. The exterior of the defence between it and the river was occupied by sheds for prahus (boats), and at each extremity were one or two houses belonging to Malay residents.

> The common habitation, as rude as it is enormous, measures 594 ft. in length, and the front room or street is the entire length of the building, and 21 feet broad. The back part is divided by mat partitions into the private apartments of the various families, and of these there are forty-five separate doors leading from the public apartment. The widowers and the young unmarried men occupy the public room, as only those with wives are entitled to the advantage of a separate room. The floor of the edifice is raised twelve feet from the ground, and the means of ascent is by the trunk of a tree with notches cut in it – a most difficult, steep, and awkward ladder. In front is a terrace fifty feet broad, running partially along the front of the building, formed like the floors, of split bamboo. This platform, as well as the front room, besides the regular inhabitants, is the resort of dogs, birds, monkeys, and fowls, and presents a glorious scene of confusion and bustle. Here the ordinary occupations of domestic labour are carried on. There were 200 men, women, and children counted in the room, and in front, whilst we were there in the middle of the day; and allowing for those who were abroad, or then in their own rooms, the whole community cannot be reckoned at less than 400 souls. The apartment of their chief is situated nearly in the centre of the building, and is larger than any other. In front of it nice mats were spread on the occasion of our visit, whilst over our heads dangled about thirty ghastly skulls, according to the custom of these people.

The Malay is the latest immigrant. He is of mixed breed, and the link that holds the Malays together is religion, for they are Mahomedans, whereas the Kayans, Land and Sea-Dayaks, and other tribes, are pagans. To accept their own traditions, the Bruni Malays came from Johore, whereas the Sarawak Malays, like those of the Malay peninsula, came direct from the ancient kingdom of Menangkabau. Between them there is a very marked difference in language, character, and appearance. Whence the proto-Malay stock came is a moot point, but it may be of Mongolian origin, subsequently blended with many other distinct ethnic types, such as the Arab and Hindu, and in the case of the Bornean Malay with the Indonesian peoples of their and the neighbouring islands. The Malays form the main population of Kuching, the capital, and of the towns Sadong, Simanggang, Kalaka, and Sibu. They have villages on the Lundu, Saribas, and lower Rejang, are scattered along the coast between Capes Datu and Sirik, and are to be found in the principal settlements beyond. The Malay has been very variously judged. The Malay Pangiran, or noble, was rapacious, cruel, and often cowardly. But he had a grace of manner, a courtesy, and hospitality that were pleasing as a varnish. The evil repute that the Malay has acquired has been due to his possession of power, and to his unscrupulous use of it to oppress the aboriginal races. But the Malay out of power is by no means an objectionable character. Sir James Brooke, the first Rajah, thus paints him: —

> The feeling of the Malay fostered by education is acute, and his passions are roused if shame be put upon him; indeed the dread of shame amounts to a disease, and the evil is that it has taken a wrong direction, being more the dread of exposure or abuse, than shame or contrition for any offence. Like other Asiatics truth is a rare quality among them, and they have neither principle nor conscience when they have the means of oppressing an infidel.

They are thus depicted by Mr. Horace St. John in a work somewhat ambitiously entitled, The Indian Archipelago, its History and present State, vol. ii. p. 267 (published 1853).

Under the heading "Malays," we find the following: —

> The Malays are Mahomedans, living under the rule of the Prophet's descendants, a mongrel race of tyrants, gamblers, opium-smokers, pirates, and chiefs, who divide their time between cockfighting, smoking, concubines, and collecting taxes.

That Mr. Horace St. John had never been in the Archipelago to which his history relates, was doubtless a matter of little consequence to many of his home-staying contemporaries. Sir Spenser St. John, brother to the author of the above-quoted Indian Archipelago, etc., who certainly wrote from a long personal experience of the people and country, offers us in his Forests of the Far East an opinion on the character and conduct of the Malay from which every one who has lived amongst these people will find no important cause to differ. Sir Spenser writes: —

> The Malays are faithful to their relatives and devotedly attached to their children. Remarkably free from crimes, and when they are committed they generally arise from jealousy. Brave when well led, they inspire confidence in their commanders; they are highly sensitive to dishonour, and tenacious as regards their conduct towards each other, and being remarkably polite in manner, they render agreeable all intercourse with them. Malays are generally accused of great idleness, and in some sense they deserve it; they do not like continuous work, but they do enough to support themselves and families in comfort, and real poverty is unknown among them.

The author here refers to the Malays of Sarawak.

Sir W. H. Treacher,[37] who knows the Malay intimately, paints him in favourable colours, now that he is restrained from tyrannising over the weak. He says: —

> I am frequently asked if treachery is not one of their characteristics, and I unhesitatingly answer No. This particular misconception was probably initiated by the original merchant-adventurers, and we can imagine what a reception a body of strange, uninvited, white infidels would receive at the hands of Mahomedan Malays, whose system of warfare, taking its rise from the nature of the thickly jungle-covered country they inhabit, is adapted more for ambuscade than for fighting at close quarters. Add to that, being Mahomedans, they were by their religion justified in indulging in piracy and murder where the victims were infidels. The Malay is possessed of at least as much passive courage as the average Englishman, and is probably less troubled by the fear of death and the hereafter than many Christians.

> On the other hand I must admit that the Malay, owing to his environment – the balmy climate making no severe calls upon him in the matters either of food, artificial warmth, or clothing, has not the bustling energy of the white man, nor the greed for amassing wealth of the Chinaman, nor does he believe in putting forth unnecessary energy for a problematical gain; he is like the English tramp who was always willing – that is, to look on at other people working, or like that one who complained that he was an unfortunate medium, too light for heavy work, and too heavy for light work.

The natural savagery of the Malay continually threatens to break out, and not infrequently does so in the form of the amok (running amuck), the national Malay method of committing suicide.

Apart from this tendency, when under control the Malay character has much in common with the Mongol, being, under ordinary circumstances, gentle, peaceable, obedient, and loyal, but at the same time proud and sensitive, and with strangers suspicious and reserved.

The Malays can be faithful and trustworthy, and they are active and clever. Serious crime among them is not common now, nor is thieving. They have a bad propensity of running into debt, and obtaining advances under engagements which they never fulfil. They make good servants and valuable policemen. All the Government steamers are officered and manned throughout by Malays, and none could desire to have better crews. They are the principal fishermen and woodsmen. Morality is perhaps not a strong point with them, but drinking is exceptional, and gambling is not as prevalent as it was, nor do they indulge in opium smoking.

With regard to the Chinaman, it will be well to let the present Rajah speak from his own experience. He says that —

> John Chinaman as a race are an excellent set of fellows, and a poor show would these Eastern countries make without their energetic presence. They combine many good, many dangerous, and it must be admitted, many bad qualities. They are given to be overbearing and insolent (unless severely kept down) nearly to as great a degree as Europeans of the rougher classes. They will cheat their neighbours and resort to all manner of deception on principle. But their redeeming qualities are comparative charitableness and liberality; a fondness for improvements; and, except in small mercantile affairs or minor trading transactions, they are honest.

> They, in a few words, possess the wherewithal to be good fellows, and are more fit to be compared to Europeans than any other race of Easterns.

> They have been excluded as much as possible from gaining a footing in Batavia,[38] under the plea of their dangerous and usurious pursuits; but the probability is that they would have raised an unpleasant antagonism in the question of competition in that country. The Chinaman would be equal to the Master, or White Man, if both worked fairly by the sweat of his brow. As for their usury, it is not of so dangerous a character as that which prevails among the Javanese and the natives.

> Upon my first arrival I was strongly possessed by the opinion that the Chinamen were all rascals and thieves – the character so generally attached to the whole race at home. But to be candid, and looking at both sides, I would as soon deal with a Chinese merchant in the East as with one who is European, and I believe the respectable class of Chinese to be equal in honesty and integrity to the white man.

> The Chinese may be nearly as troublesome a people to govern as Europeans, certainly not more so; and their good qualities, in which they are not deficient, should be cherished and stimulated, while their bad ones are regulated by the discipline of the law under a just and liberal government. They are a people specially amenable to justice, and are happier under a stringent than a lenient system.

Of the Chinese the Sarawak Gazette (November 1, 1897) says: —

> The characteristics of this extraordinary people must at once strike the minds of the most superficial of European residents in the East. Their wonderful energy and capacity for work; their power of accumulating wealth; their peculiar physical powers, which render them equally fertile, and their children equally vivacious, on the equator as in more temperate regions, and which enable them to rear a new race of natives under climatic conditions entirely different from those under which their forefathers were born, are facts with which we are all acquainted. Their mental endowments, too, are by no means to be despised, as nearly every year shows us, when the results of the examination for the Queen's Scholarship of the Straits Settlements are published, and some young Chinese boy departs for England to enter into educational competition with his European fellows.

Chinese get on well with all natives, with whom they intermarry, the mixed offspring being a healthy and good-looking type. They form the merchant, trading, and artisan classes, and they are the only agriculturists and mine labourers of any worth. Without these people a tropical country would remain undeveloped.

The only census that appears to have been attempted in Sarawak was taken in 1871. Judging by the report that was published in the Gazette this census was made in a very imperfect manner.[39] Of the interior population it includes Sea-Dayaks, but no means were obtainable for ascertaining the numbers of Kayans, Kenyahs, and many other tribes that go to make up the population of the State. It makes no separate mention of the large coast population of the Melanaus, who were presumably lumped with the Malays.

The census gives the following figures: —


The report concedes it was the generally received opinion that the population was nearer 200,000, and if we include the Kayans, Kenyahs, etc., and accept the approximate correctness of the above figures, that estimate would be about correct.

In 1871, the State extended as far as Kedurong Point only, but since that the territorial area has been nearly doubled. The population is now estimated at 500,000, though this is probably too liberal a calculation, and the following is a fairer estimate: —


The names by which the various tribes are known are those given to them by others, mostly by the coast people, or are taken from the name of the river on which they reside, or from which they came. Daya (as it should be spelt, and as it is pronounced) in the Melanau and Bruni Malay dialect means "land," "in-land." So we have Orang daya, an inlander. Ka-daya-an is contracted into Kayan; Ukit and Bukitan are from the Malay word bukit– a hill; and tanjong is the Malay for a cape or a point round which a river sweeps. Hence Orang Ukit or Bukitan, a hill-man,[40] and Orang Tanjong, riverside people.

As in ancient Germany the districts were known by the names of the rivers that watered them, and each was a gau, so it is in Borneo, where the rivers are the roads of communication, and give their names to the districts and to the people that inhabit them. Indeed, in Borneo one can see precisely at this day what was the ancient Gau-verfassung in the German Empire.

The area of Sarawak is about 50,000 square miles, and the coast line about 500 miles.

The climate is hot and humid; it is especially moist during the N.E. monsoon, and less so during the S.W. monsoon. The former commences and the latter ends sometimes early and sometimes late in October, and in April the seasons again change. The months of most rain are December, January, and February; from February the rainfall decreases until July, the month of least rain, and increases gradually after that month. The average yearly rainfall is 160 inches. The maximum in any one year, 225.95 inches, was recorded in 1882, and the minimum 102.4 in 1888. The heaviest rainfall for one month, 69.25 inches, occurred in January, 1881, and the least,66 inches, in August, 1877. The most in one day was 15.3 inches on February 8, 1876. Rain falls on an average 226 days in the year. These notes are taken from observations made in Kuching extending over thirty years.[41] At Sibu, the average rainfall for five years was 116 inches, at Baram 92 inches, and at Trusan 167 inches. Except in the sun at mid-day and during the early hours of the afternoon the heat is hardly ever oppressive, and the mornings, evenings and nights are generally cool. In 1906, the maximum average temperature was 91°.6, and the minimum 71°.2 Fahrenheit; the highest reading was 94° in May, and the lowest 69°.6 in July.[42]

In few countries are thunderstorms more severe than in Borneo, but deaths from lightning are not very common, and hail falls so rarely that when it does fall it is an awe-inspiring object to some natives. Archdeacon Perham records that during a very severe hailstorm in 1874 some Dayaks collected the hailstones under the impression that they were rare charms, whilst others fled from their house, believing that everybody and everything in it would be turned into a petrified rock, a woeful monument to future generations. To avert this catastrophe they boiled the hailstones and burnt locks of their hair.[43]

## CHAPTER II. EARLY HISTORY

Borneo was known to the Arabs many centuries ago, and Sinbad the Sailor was fabled to have visited the island. It was then imagined that a ship might be freighted there with pearls, gold, camphor, gums, perfumed oils, spices, and gems, and this was not far from the truth.

When Genghis Khan conquered China, and founded his mighty Mogul Empire (1206-27), it is possible that he extended his rule over Borneo, where Chinese had already settled. Kublai Khan is said to have invaded Borneo with a large force in 1292; and that a Chinese province was subsequently established in northern Borneo, in which the Sulu islands were included, is evidenced by Bruni and Sulu traditions. The Celestials have left their traces in the name of Kina Balu (the Chinese Widow) given to the noble peak in the north of the island,[44] and of the rivers Kina-batangan (the Chinese river) and Kina-bangun on the east coast of Borneo, and certain jars, mentioned in chapter I. p. [26], ornamented with the royal dragon of China, are treasured as heirlooms by the Dayaks. At Santubong, at the mouth of the Sarawak river, Chinese coins dating back to B.C. 600 and 112, and from A.D. 588 and onwards, have been found, with many fragments of Chinese pottery. The name Santubong is itself Chinese, San-tu-bong, meaning the "King of the Jungle" in the Kheh dialect, and the "Mountain of wild pig" in the Hokien dialect.

Besides the antique jars, the art of making which appears to have been lost, further evidence of an ancient Chinese trade may be found in the old and peculiar beads so treasured by the Kayans and Kenyahs. These are generally supposed to be Venetian, and to have been introduced by the Portuguese. Beccari (op. cit. p. 263) mentions that he had heard or read that the Malay word for a bead, manit (pronounced maneet), was a corruption of the Italian word moneta (money), which was used for glass beads at the time when the Venetians were the foremost traders in the world. But he points out "that the Venetians made their beads in imitation of the Chinese, who it appears had used them from the remotest times in their commercial transactions with the less civilized tribes of Southern Asia and the Malay islands." And it was by the Chinese these beads were probably introduced into Borneo; manit is but the Sanskrit word mani, meaning a bead.[45]

From the Kina-batangan river came the Chinese wife of Akhmed, the second Sultan of Bruni. She was the daughter of Ong Sum Ping, a Chinese envoy, and from her and Sultan Akhmed the Bruni sultans down to the present day, and for over twenty generations, trace their descent on the distaff side, for their daughter married the Arab Sherip Ali, who became Sultan in succession to his father-in-law, and they were the founders of the present dynasty.[46] Sulu chronicles contain the same legend; and according to these Ong Sum Ping, or Ong Ti Ping, settled in the Kina-batangan A.D. 1375. He was probably a governor in succession to others.

The Hindu-Javan empire of Majapahit in Java certainly extended over Borneo, but it left there no such stately temples and palaces as those that remain in Java, and the only reminiscences of the Hindu presence in Sarawak are the name of a god, Jewata,[47] which lingers among the Dayaks, a mutilated stone bull, two carved stones like the lingams of the Hindus; and at Santubong, on a large immovable rock situated up a small stream, is a rudely carved statue of a human figure nearly life-size, with outstretched arms, lying flat, face downwards, in an uncouth position, perhaps commemorative of some crime.[48]

Santubong is at the eastern mouth of the Sarawak river, and is prettily situated just inside the entrance, and at the foot of the isolated peak bearing the same name, which rises boldly out of the sea to a height of some 3000 feet. This place, which apparently was once a Chinese, and then a Hindu-Javan colony, is now a small fishing hamlet only, with a few European bungalows, being the sea-side resort of Kuching; close by are large cutch works. In ancient days, judging by the large quantity of slag that is to be seen here, iron must have been extensively mined.

Recently some ancient and massive gold ornaments, seal rings, necklets, etc., were exposed by a landslip at the Limbang station, which have been pronounced to be of Hindu origin; and ancient Hindu gold ornaments have been found at Santubong and up the Sarawak river.

Bruni had been a powerful kingdom, and had conquered Luzon and the Sulu islands before it became a dependency of Majapahit, but at the time of the death of the last Batara[49] of that kingdom, Bruni ceased to send tribute. The empire of Majapahit fell in 1478[50] before the Mussulman Malays. The origin of the Malays is shrouded in obscurity; they are first heard of in Sumatra, in Menangkabau,[51] from whence they emigrated in A.D. 1160 to Singapura, "the Lion city." They were attacked and expelled in 1252 by the princes of Majapahit, when they settled in Malacca. There they throve, and embraced the religion of Islam in 1276.

From Sumatra and the Malay peninsula the Malays continued to spread, and gradually to establish sultanates and states under them. The process by which this was effected was seldom by conquest, but by the peaceful immigration of a few families who settled on some unoccupied part of the coast within the mouth of a river. Then, in the course of time, they increased and spread to neighbouring rivers, and formed a state. By subjecting the aboriginal tribes of the interior, and by compulsion or consent, including weaker Malayan states of like origin, by degrees some of these states expanded into powerful sultanates with feudal princes under them.

So the Malayan kingdoms arose and gained power; and strengthened by the spirit of cohesion which their religion gave them, they finally overthrew the Hindu-Javan empire of Majapahit.

In Borneo there were sultans at Bruni, Sambas, Banjermasin, Koti, Belungan, Pasir, Tanjong, Berau, and Pontianak, and other small states under pangirans and sherips.

Exaggerated accounts of the "sweet riches of Borneo" had led the early Portuguese, Dutch, and English voyagers to regard the island, the Insula Bonæ Fortunæ of Ptolemy, as the El Dorado of the Eastern Archipelago; but these in turn found out their error, and, directing their attention to the more profitable islands in its neighbourhood, almost forsook Borneo until later years.

The Spaniards appear to have been the first Europeans to visit the island, as they were the first to make the voyage round the world, and to find the way to the Archipelago from the east, a feat which caused the Portuguese much uneasiness. They touched at Bruni in 1521, and Pigafetta says that there were then 25,000 families in the city, which on a low computation would give the population at 100,000; and he gives a glowing account of its prosperity. The Portuguese, under the infamous Jorge de Menezes, followed in 1526, and they were there again in 1530. They confirm Pigafetta as to the flourishing condition of the place. From 1530 the Portuguese kept up a regular intercourse with Bruni from Malacca, which the great Alfonso d'Albuquerque had conquered in 1511, until they were expelled from that place by the Dutch in 1641. Then they diverted the trade, which was chiefly in pepper, to their settlement at Macao, where they had placed a Factory in 1557, and from whence a Roman Catholic mission was established at Bruni by Fr. Antonio di Ventimiglia, who died there in 1691. It seems certain they had a Factory at Bruni, probably for a short time only, in the seventeenth century, though it is impossible now to do more than conjecture the date; but that they continued their trade with Bruni up to the close of the eighteenth century appears to be without doubt; and also that they had a Factory at Sambas out of which they were driven by the Dutch in 1609. On Mercator's map, alluded to in the first footnote of this chapter, are the words "Lave donde foÿ Don Manuel de Lima," or Lave where Don Manuel of Lima[52] resided. Lave is Mempawa, sometimes spelt Mempava in recent English maps, a place between Sambas and Pontianak – so the Portuguese were even farther south than Sambas in the sixteenth century.

In 1565, the Spanish took possession of the Philippines, conquered Manila in 1571, and, five years later, according to both Spanish and Bruni records, were taking an active interest in Bruni affairs, which, however, does not appear to have lasted for long. In 1576, Saif ul Rejal was Sultan. In the Bruni records[53] it is stated that a noble named Buong Manis, whose title was Pangiran Sri Lela (Sirela in the Spanish records), was goaded into rebellion by the Sultan's brother, Rajah Sakam, by the abduction of his daughter on the day of her wedding. To gain a footing in Bruni the Spaniards took advantage of this, and Don Francisco La Sande, the second Governor of the Philippines, conquered Bruni, and set Sri Lela on the throne. Four years later the Spaniards again had occasion to support their protégé with an armed force; but it ended in the rightful Sultan being restored through the efforts of the Rajah Sakam, aided by a Portuguese, who had become a Bruni pangiran,[54] and the usurper taking refuge in the Belait, where he was slain. To close the history, so far as it is known to us, of the Spanish connection with Bruni, in 1645, in retaliation for piracies committed on the coasts of their colonies, the Spanish sent an expeditionary force to punish Bruni, which it appears was very effectually done.

The first Dutchman to visit Bruni was Olivier Van Noort, in 1600. He seems to have been impressed by the politeness and civility of the Bruni nobles, but, fortunately for himself, not to the extent of trusting them too much, for treachery was attempted. Nine years later, as we have noticed, the Portuguese had to make room for the Dutch at Sambas, and here the latter established a Factory, which was, however, abandoned in 1623. They returned to this part of Borneo in 1778, and established Factories at Pontianak, Landak, Mempawa, and Sukadana, but these proving unprofitable were abandoned in 1791. In 1818, an armed force was sent to re-establish these Factories, two years after Java had been restored to Holland by England, and from these, including Sambas, the Dutch Residency of Western Borneo has arisen.

A certain Captain Cowley appears to have been the first Englishman, of whom we know anything, to visit Borneo, or at least that part of it with which this history deals, and in 1665 he spent some little time at "a small island which lay near the north end of Borneo,"[55] but he did not visit the mainland; perhaps, however, he may not have been the first. As far back as 1612, Sir Henry Middleton projected a voyage to Borneo. He died at Bantam in Java, where the East India Company had established a Factory in 1603, but it was not until 1682 that the Dutch expelled the English from that place, and from thence to Borneo is too simple an adventure not to have been attempted and accomplished by the daring old sea-dogs of those days. According to Dampier, a Captain Bowry was in Borneo in 1686;[56] some English were captured by the Dutch when they took Sukadana in 1687; and there were probably others there before, but no settlement on the north and north-western shores was effected by the English until 1773, when the East India Company formed a settlement at Balambangan, an island north of Marudu Bay, the same probably as that on which Captain Cowley had stayed. This settlement, however, was but short lived, for in February 1775 it was attacked by a small force of Sulus and Lanuns led by a cousin of the Sultan of Sulu, Datu Teting. The garrison of English and Bugis was more than sufficient to have repelled the attack, but they were taken completely by surprise; the Resident and the few settlers managed to escape in what vessels they could find.[57] A number of cannon and muskets, and considerable booty, fell into the hands of the raiders. The motive for this act was revenge; the English had behaved badly to the natives of the neighbouring islands, and Datu Teting had himself suffered the indignity of being placed in the stocks when on a visit to the settlement. The Company had established a Factory at Bruni as well, having obtained from the Sultan the monopoly of the pepper trade, and to this Factory the survivors retired, but some settled on the island of Labuan, where they made a village. In 1803, the Company again established themselves at Balambangan, but after a short occupation abandoned the island, together with the Factory at Bruni. No punishment followed Datu Teting's act, and British prestige in northern Borneo was destroyed.

This is briefly the whole history of British enterprise in that part of Borneo lying north of the equator, and it reflects little credit on the part played by our countrymen in Eastern affairs in those days.

We have shown that Bruni early in the fourteenth century possessed a population of at least 100,000. According to Sir Hugh Low, two hundred years after Pigafetta's visit, the population was estimated at 40,000, with a Chinese population in its neighbourhood of 30,000, engaged in planting pepper.[58] In 1809, the city had shrunk to 3000 houses with a population of 15,000.[59] In 1847, Low placed the population at 12,000; the Chinese had then disappeared, excepting a few who had been reduced to slavery. The population, still diminishing, is now under 8000.

On the picturesque hills that surround the town are still to be found traces of thriving plantations which formerly existed there, and which extended for many miles into the interior. These have totally disappeared, with the population which cultivated them. In 1291, two centuries before the first European vessel rounded the Cape,[60] Ser Marco Polo visited the Archipelago. He gives us the first narrative we possess of the Chinese junk trade to the westward, and mentions a great and profitable traffic carried on by the Chinese with Borneo,[61] and this trade throve for many years afterwards; even in 1776 the commerce with China was considerable,[62] though then it must have been declining, for it had ceased before the close of that century. Hunt records that in his time there were still to be seen at Bruni old docks capable of berthing vessels of from 500-600 tons. Now the most striking feature of the place is its profound poverty. Nothing remains of its past glory and prosperity but its ancient dynasty.

Sir Hugh Low tells us that these old Malay kingdoms appear to have risen to their zenith of power and prosperity two hundred years after their conversion to Islam, and then their decline commenced, but he should have added half a century to this epoch. The late Rajah was of opinion that perhaps the introduction of Muhammadanism may have been the cause of their deterioration. Two hundred and fifty years after the conversion of the Malays to Muhammadanism, and under the ægis of this religion, all the Malayan States attained their zenith. This period was coetaneous with the appearance of what may fairly be described as their white peril, and the introduction of Muhammadanism, a religion which Christians, in their ignorance of its true precepts, are too apt wholly to condemn, brought with it the pernicious sherips, the pests of the Archipelago. The decay of the old Malayan kingdoms was due primarily to the rapacious and oppressive policy adopted by Europeans in their early dealings with these States, which was continued in a more modified form until within recent times. How this was brought about, and how the sherips contributed to it, is in the sequel.

Prior to the advent of the late Rajah in 1838, Sarawak appears to have attracted no attention, except that Gonsavo Pereira, who made the second Portuguese visit to Bruni in 1530, says that Lave (Mempawa), Tanjapura (which cannot be identified), and Cerava (Sarawak) were the principal ports, and contained many wealthy merchants; and Valentyn relates that in 1609 the Dutch found that Calca (Kalaka), Saribas, and Melanugo had fallen away from Borneo (Bruni) and placed themselves under the power of the king of Johore.[63] Melanugo is also difficult to identify, but it may be that a transcriptive error has crept in somewhere, and that it refers to the Malanau districts beyond Kalaka.[64]

The Sarawak Malays claim their origin from the ancient Kingdom of Menangkabau in Sumatra. Fifteen generations back, one Datu Undi, whose title was Rajah Jarom, a prince of the royal house of Menangkabau, emigrated with his people to Borneo, and settled on the Sarawak river. This prince had seven children, the eldest being a daughter, the Datu Permisuri.[65] She married a royal prince of Java (this was after the downfall of Majapahit), and from them in a direct line came the Datu Patinggi Ali, of whom more will be noticed in the sequel, and the lineage is now represented by his grandson, the present Datu Bandar of Sarawak.

The Datu Permisuri remained in Sarawak. Rajah Jarom's eldest son established himself in the Saribas; his third son in the Samarahan; the fourth in the Rejang;[66] and the fifth up the right-hand branch of the Sarawak, from whence his people spread into the Sadong. These settlements increased within their original limits, but were not extended beyond the Rejang.

Beyond this the Malays of Sarawak know little; but that these settlements must have early succumbed to the rising power of Bruni is evident. But it is also evident that after that power had commenced to wane, its hold over Sarawak gradually weakened until it became merely nominal. In 1609, the year they established themselves at Sambas, the Dutch found that these districts had fallen away from Bruni, as we have noticed. There may have been, and probably were, spasmodic assertions of authority on the part of Bruni, but it seems fairly evident that the Sarawak Malays managed to maintain an independence more or less complete for many years, up to within a very short period of the late Rajah's arrival, and then they had placed themselves again under the sovereignty of the Sultan, only to be almost immediately driven into rebellion by Pangiran Makota, the Sultan's first and last governor of Sarawak.

Just a century after the Portuguese had shown the way, and had won for their king the haughty title of "Lord of the Navigation and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and India," the English and the Dutch appeared in the Archipelago. The latter under Houtman, who had learnt the way from the Portuguese under whom he had served, were the first, in 1595, if we exclude Drake, 1578, and Cavendish, ten years later, and both merely passed through the southern portion of the Archipelago on their way home on their voyages round the world.

During the seventeenth century the English confined their energies to buccaneering and trading, and established only two Factories, at Bantam 1603, and at Bencoolen 1685. The Dutch went in for conquest, established themselves strongly at Jakatra, renamed by them Batavia, in 1611, and then proceeded to drive the Portuguese out of their settlements. The power of Portugal had been humbled by Spain, and the courageous spirit of the old conquistadores had departed. One by one her settlements were wrested from her, and by the end of the century Holland was paramount in the Archipelago. Beyond one or two abortive descents upon Luzon, one, probably the last, under the famous Tasman, the Dutch had left the Spaniards undisturbed in the Philippines, but to the English was left Bencoolen only, Bantam having been taken away from them in 1682, and to the Portuguese a portion of the island of Timor.

During the latter half of the eighteenth century commenced the rise of Great Britain as a political power in the Malayan Peninsula and Archipelago. In 1760, her only settlements, those on the western coast of Sumatra, had been destroyed by the French, but these were re-established in 1763, and Bencoolen was fortified. In 1786, the colony at Penang (Prince Edward's island) was established; and nine years later Malacca was captured from the Dutch.

Early in the nineteenth century came the temporary downfall of Holland. In 1811, Java was taken by the British, and the Dutch settlements and dependencies passed into their hands, though these were soon to be restored. After subjugating the independent princes of the interior and introducing order throughout Java, which the Dutch had so far failed to accomplish, all her possessions in the Archipelago were restored to Holland in 1816; and in 1825 Bencoolen was exchanged for Malacca. Singapore was founded in 1819.

In Borneo south of the equator, excepting Sukadana, which has already been mentioned, Banjermasin had been the only country to attract attention, and in this formerly rich pepper country the Dutch and English were alternately established. As early as 1606, the former, with disastrous results, attempted to establish a Factory there, and after that experience they appear to have left the place severely alone, and the Banjers were free of the white peril for another century. Then, in 1702, the East India Company established a Factory there. As this venture is an interesting illustration of the methods adopted by the English, and an example of their common misconduct and mismanagement, we give a few particulars. The old Dutch chronicler, Valentyn, tells us how the Factor, Captain Moor, who lived in a house constructed on a raft, with only a wretched earth rampart ashore, and a handful of English and Bugis (of the Celebes) soldiers, laid a heavy hand on the people, but managed to hold his own, until in 1706 a Captain Barry commenced building a proper fort, but he died before it was completed. Then a surgeon, who was more interested in natural history than anything else, became Factor. The aggression of the English increased, and the Sultan drove them out with the loss of many men and two ships. Captain Beeckman, of the H.E.I. Company's service, who was there in 1713, ascertained that Captain Barry had been poisoned, and he tells us so hateful had their servants rendered the name of the Company to the Banjereens that he had to pretend his ships were private traders. They had promised the Sultan to build no forts nor make soldiers. They grossly ill-treated, and even murdered the natives, imposed duties, and finally insulted the Sultan, and attempted to capture the queen-mother. The English, taken by the natives, including a Captain Cockburn, were put to a cruel death.[67]

Then came the Dutch once more, in 1747. They left in 1810, and the Sultan then petitioned the English to settle there again. This was done, but, simultaneously with their evacuation of Java, the English retired from Banjermasin, and it was transferred to the Dutch, who shortly afterwards re-established their old stations in western Borneo up to Sambas.

The Dutch continued to extend their influence, till, in process of time, they had acquired control over two-thirds of the island.

Necessarily this is but a brief summary of the political history of Borneo, and of the countries adjacent to it up to the time when commences our story of the north-western portion of the island, but it may be deemed sufficient to afford the reader a clearer insight into the narrative that follows.

The system of trade adopted by the Dutch, following in the footsteps of the Portuguese, was bad. Each in turn made of trade a monopoly, excluding the vessels of every other nation. Such produce of the country as was suitable for the Chinese market had to be sent first to one of their own depôts, thence to be transhipped to China, and all direct intercourse with China was checked. This cessation of direct trade affected the prosperity of the ports, among others Bruni, in a variety of ways. First, by the circuitous direction of the trade the exports became too expensive to fetch the cost of the double carriage, and in course of time dwindled to nothing. In the next place, the cessation of immediate intercourse with China arrested the flow of immigrants, hard-working and frugal men, who would have exploited the industries and natural products of the island. A third, and that the most serious effect of all, as a result of the extinction of honest trade and internal development, was the encouragement given to piracy. The sultans and rajahs were unable to maintain their state, and the people to satisfy their requirements by just means, and so commenced to live by piracy. So long as immediate requirements were satisfied by this means, they gave no thought to the morrow; it did not occur to them, or they were too ignorant to consider, that they were pulling up by the roots that on which the future prosperity of their countries depended.

"The Dutch had no sooner established themselves at Batavia than, not satisfied with transferring to it the emporium of Bantam, they conceived the idea of making it the sole and only depôt of the commerce of the Archipelago… The destruction of the native trade of the Archipelago by this withering policy may be considered as the origin of many of the evils and of all the piracies of which we now complain. A maritime and commercial people, suddenly deprived of all honest employment, or the means of respectable subsistence, either sunk into apathy and indolence, or expended their natural energies in piratical attempts to recover by force and plunder what they had been deprived of by policy and fraud." So wrote Sir Stamford Raffles in 1821.

That bold, old west-country buccaneer, and erstwhile captain of the King's Navy, William Dampier, who besides being a shrewd fighter and trader, appears to have been equally as shrewd an observer, draws a sad picture of the degradation of flourishing states under the grinding power of the Dutch. He relates that the natives had ever been willing to trade with all nations, but the Dutch East India Company not only monopolised all the trade of those countries under their immediate control, but by means of their guard-ships prevented the adjacent countries trading with others than themselves, even with those of their own countrymen who were not connected with the Company, though they were not in a position to supply these countries with all the commodities their inhabitants needed, or to purchase or load all their produce.[68] The cultivation of pepper naturally declined,[69] and in some places the natives were prevented planting more than the Company would require. So it was with spices. In October every year the Dutch would send a large force throughout the spice islands to destroy trees, so as to keep the production down, and small garrisons were scattered about, whose sole duty appears to have been to see that the cultivation of spices was restricted to the requirements of the Dutch alone.[70]

"The people, though they are Malayans, yet they are civil enough, engaged thereto by trade; for the more trade the more civility; and, on the contrary, the less trade the more barbarity and inhumanity. For trade has a strong influence upon all people, who have found the sweet of it, bringing with it so many conveniences of life as it does. I find the Malayans in general are implacable enemies to the Dutch; and all seems to spring from an earnest desire they have of a free trade, which is restrained by them where they have any power. But 'tis freedom only must be the means to encourage any of these remote people to trade, – especially such of them as are industrious, and whose inclinations are bent this way, as most of the Malayans are.

"Where there is any trade to be had, yet not sufficient to maintain a Factory, or where there may not be a convenient place to build a fort, so as to secure the whole trade to themselves, they (the Dutch) send their guard-ships, which, lying at the mouth of the rivers, deter strangers from coming thither, and keep the petty princes in awe of them. This probably causes so many petty robberies and piracies as are committed by the Malayans.

"Being thus provoked by the Dutch, and hindered of a free trade by their guard-ships, it is probable they therefore commit piracies themselves, or connive at and encourage those who do. So that the pirates seem to do it as much to revenge themselves on the Dutch for restraining their trade, as to gain this way what they cannot obtain in way of traffic."

So wrote Dampier, and if we go on to seventy years ago, when Sir James Brooke commenced, unaided, that counter-move which resulted in the salvation of the northern part of Borneo from the then hurtful and narrow-minded rule of the Dutch, and to its being opened to British trade and influence, we learn from his own words "how the policy of the Dutch has at the present day reduced this 'Eden of the Eastern Wave' to a state of anarchy and confusion, as repugnant to humanity as it is to commercial prosperity… It is the direct influence which it exerts that has proved baneful to the Archipelago under the assumed jurisdiction of this European power. Her unceasing interference in the concerns of the Malay governments and the watchful fomenting of their internal dissensions have gradually and effectually destroyed all rightful authority, and given rise to a number of petty states which thrive on piracy and fatten on the slave trade. The consequent disorganisation of society arising from these causes has placed a bar to commercial enterprise and personal adventure, and has probably acted on the interior tribes much in the same way as this fatal policy has affected the Malays. As far as can be ascertained, the financial and commercial concerns of the Dutch have not been prosperous; it is easy to conceive such to be the case, as it will be conceded that oppression and prosperity cannot co-exist. In short, with the smallest amount of advantage, the Dutch Government has all along endeavoured to perpetuate an exclusive system, aiming more at injury to others than any advantage to themselves or to the nations under their sway; for where an enlightened administration might have produced the most beneficial results, we are forced to deplore not only the mischief done and the mass of good neglected, but the misery and suffering inflicted on unhappy races, capable, as has been proved, of favourable development under other circumstances."

In Borneo, as elsewhere, the Malays had for long been notorious pirates, but the Sea-Dayaks, only so far as consisted in spasmodic raids for the acquisition of heads.

The Malay governors, now under the influence of the Arab pseudo-sherips, diverted whole tribes of Dayaks from their peaceable avocations, and converted them into sea-robbers. The cultivation of their lands to produce saleable goods, for which there was now no sale, was abandoned, and fertile districts that had grown abundant crops were reduced to unprofitable jungle.

But it was not only on trading vessels in the China seas that they were taught to prey. The Malay princes and nobles sent those tribes whom they had demoralised to ascend the rivers and plunder and exterminate the peaceful tribes in the interior.

Among the tribes thus changed from an agricultural people into pirates were the Sekrang and the Saribas. When the Malay Muhammadan princes wanted slaves they summoned their Dayak nominal subjects to follow them, and led them against other tribes, either to harry the coasts or to penetrate up the rivers ravaging; and then, from this first stage to a second, converted them into pirates who swept the seas, falling on trading vessels, murdering the crews, and appropriating the plunder. According to agreement the Malay princes received two-thirds of the spoil, and their Dayak subjects, whom they had trained to be pirates, were granted one-third of the plunder and all the heads they could take.

About this head-hunting something has been said already, more will be said presently. As a Dayak said to a European, "You like books, we like heads."

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the Sultan of Bruni, Muadin, was constrained to call in the aid of his neighbour, the Sultan of Sulu, to quell an insurrection, and in consideration of this assistance ceded to him the land from the north as far as the Kimanis river.

Sultan Abdul Mubin had murdered his uncle, Sultan Muhammad Ali, and usurped the throne. Pangiran Bongsu, under the title of Sultan Muadin, with the assistance of the Sulus, defeated Abdul Mubin, who was executed. Muhammad Ali was murdered in 1662, and a war ensued that lasted about twelve years.[71]

The Spaniards attacked Sulu, captured the capital, and carried off the Sultan to Manila. When the English took Manila, under Sir William Draper in 1762, they released the Sultan Mumin, and he ceded the territory that had been granted to his predecessors by the Sultan of Bruni in or about 1674 to the East India Company, by deed signed in 1763, in consideration of an engagement entered into by the Company to protect him from the Spaniards.

Sultan Jemal ul Alam, of Bruni, who died in 1796, married Rajah Nur Alam, daughter of his uncle Sultan Khan Zul Alam, 21st Sultan of Bruni, by his first wife. By her he had one legitimate son, Omar Ali Saif Udin. The wife of Sultan Jemal had a full brother, Sri Banun Muda (usually called Rajah Api), and also half-brothers Hasim and Muhammad, sons of Khan Zul Alam by his second wife, and Bedrudin and two other sons by his third wife, a Lanun lady of rank.

On the death of his grand-uncle, also grandfather, and predecessor, Khan Zul Alam, Omar Ali was but a child, and Rajah Api claimed the throne, under the title of Sultan Muhammad Alam, and there were years of trouble in Bruni. Sir Hugh Low describes him as a madman with the most cruel propensities, whence probably his nickname Api, which signifies "Fire." He treated his nephew with great roughness, and often threatened him with a drawn sword, and Omar ran whimpering to his mother to complain. The prince's mother had long been jealous of the assumption of the sultanate by her brother, and, her son being almost imbecile, she hoped, by getting rid of Api, to exercise great power in the state. Accordingly, about the year 1828, she summoned those of her party and surrounded the residence of the Sultan Muhammad Alam, or Api, who finding himself deserted escaped in a boat. His sister sent after him a pangiran, or noble, with professions of friendship, and this pangiran persuaded him to assume the disguise of a woman to facilitate his escape. Then he got him into a little skiff, and led him into an ambush, where he was ordered to be put to death. He received the intimation with firmness. "Observe," said he, "when you strangle me, on which side my body shall fall – if to the right it prognosticates good for Bruni, if to the left it foretells evil." The bow-string was twisted, and Api sank on his left side. As we shall see that omen proved true.

Api's brother, Rajah Muda Hasim, an amiable, courteous, feeble man, was installed as Regent; and some time later was sent to Sarawak, where a rebellion had broken out, caused by the exactions and cruelty of the Pangiran Makota, who had been appointed governor of Sarawak by the Sultan. Hasim found the whole district a prey to anarchy, and those who should have reduced it to order were incompetent and too cowardly to fight. All he was able to do was to maintain a nominal sovereignty in the capital, Kuching.

The Malays and Arabs being Muhammadans, looked down on the pagan Land-Dayaks, subject to their domination, as mere bondsmen, to be slaughtered, fleeced, or enslaved – to be treated, in a word, as their caprice dictated, without being taken to task for their misdeeds. The limit of their exactions was fixed by necessity. The point beyond which oppression ceased was that where nothing was left to be extorted. But over the Sea-Dayaks of Sekrang, Saribas, and Kanowit they had no power. These tribes were far too independent in character and powerful to submit to oppression. These Sea-Dayaks would follow their so-called masters on a piratical expedition, and would obey them only so far as it pleased themselves to do so. As to the Kayans, they were too greatly feared to be molested. The late Mr. H. B. Low[72] in 1879 was refused permission by the Sultan to cross into the Baram by the Limbang, for fear lest this should show the Kayans a way into Bruni. The Malay rulers oppressed their own people and the Melanaus almost as badly as they did the Land-Dayaks, murdering, robbing, and enslaving them.

The Land-Dayaks in Sarawak were governed by local Malay datus called Patinggi, Bandar, and Temanggong. These officers monopolised the trade. When the Dayaks had collected rice, edible birds' nests, wax, etc., the Patinggi claimed the right to buy the produce at a price fixed by himself, and one that barely allowed the seller enough to pay for his own necessaries. And not only did the Patinggi claim the right of pre-emption, but so did all his relatives, and in the end so did every Bornean Malay of any position. If the poor Dayak did not produce sufficient to satisfy the Patinggi, girls and children were taken to make up the deficit and sold into slavery.[73]

He would sometimes send a bar of iron to a headman of a tribe, whether the latter wanted it or not, and require him to purchase it at an exorbitant price fixed by the sender. The man dared not refuse; then another bar was sent, and again another, till the Dayak chief was reduced to poverty.

If a Malay met a Dayak in his boat, and the boat pleased him, he would cut a notch in the gunwale in token that he appropriated it to his own use. Possibly enough some other Bornean Malay might fancy the same boat and cut another notch. This might occur several times. Then the Dayak was required to hand over his boat to the first who had marked it, and to indemnify the other claimants to the value of the vessel.

Any injury done, or pretended to have been done, however accidentally, by a Dayak to a Malay, had to be paid for by a ruinous fine. There was no court of appeal, no possibility of redress. A Malay could always, and at any time, enter the house of a Dayak, and live there in free quarters as long as he pleased, insult or maltreat the wife and children of his unwilling host with impunity, and on leaving carry away with him any of the Dayak's property to which he had taken a fancy; and, when the novelty of the possession wore off, force his late host to buy it back again at an extravagant price. But this was not all. When antimony was found, the unfortunate Land-Dayaks were driven to mine it at no wage at all, and their hard taskmasters did not even trouble themselves to provide them with food.[74] The consequence was that many of them died, and others fled to the jungle. As one of them pathetically said, "We do not live like men; we are like monkeys; we are hunted from place to place. We have no houses, and when we light a fire we are in fear lest the smoke should betray to our enemies where we are."

Of Dayaks there are, as already stated, two sorts, the Land-Dayak and the Sea-Dayak, the first of Indonesian, the second of proto-Malay stock. The former are a quiet, timid, industrious people, honest, and by no means lacking in intelligence, living on hill-tops to which they have fled from their oppressors; the latter throve on piracy, having been brought to this by the Muhammadan Malays and the half-bred Arabs. But even among the Sea-Dayaks a few tribes had not been thus vitiated, and upon these the late Rajah could always rely for support.

Their Malay masters furnished the Sea-Dayaks, whom they had converted into predatory savages, with ammunition and guns, and sent them either to sea to attack merchant vessels, or up the rivers to fall upon villages of peaceful tribes; then the men were slaughtered, the women and children carried off into slavery. The villages were burnt, and by a refinement of cruelty the fruit trees cut down and standing crops destroyed, from which the principal provision of the natives was gathered, so as to reduce to starvation those who had escaped into the jungle. Land-Dayak tribes that formerly had been numerous and prosperous were reduced to small numbers and to poverty. One that reckoned 230 families dwindled to 50. Three whole tribes were completely exterminated. One of 120 families was brought down to two, that is to say, of 960 persons only 16 were left. The population that had consisted of 1795 families, or, reckoning eight persons to each family, 14,360 souls, in ten years was reduced to 6792 souls showing a decrease in these ten years of 946 families, or of 7568 persons. On Sir James (then Mr.) Brooke's visit to the country in 1840, in converse with the chief of one of the native tribes, the man told him, "The Rajah takes from us whatever he wants, at whatever price he pleases, and the pangirans take whatever they can get for no price at all." "At first," says Mr. Brooke, "the Dayak paid a small stated sum as an acknowledgment of vassalage, by degrees this became an arbitrary and unlimited taxation, and now, to consummate the iniquity, the entire tribes are pronounced slaves and liable to be disposed of."

The natural result of such treatment was that those natives who escaped spoilation and slaughter fled up the country beyond reach of their persecutors. The depopulation from the same cause went on in the neighbourhood of Bruni as well as in Sarawak. Mr. Spenser St. John says in 1858: "It is melancholy to see this fine district (Limbang), once well cultivated, now returning to jungle; formerly where the population extended a hundred miles beyond the last village at present inhabited, the supply of provisions was ample at Bruni. Now that the natives are decreasing, while Bruni is perhaps as numerous as ever, the demands made by the nobles are too great even for the natives' forbearance, and in disgust they are gradually abandoning all garden cultivation. Already brushwood is taking the place of bananas and yams, so that few of either are to be had. The people say it is useless for them to plant for others to eat the whole produce. Then as the natives cannot furnish the supplies exacted of them by the pangirans, these latter take from them their children; the lads are circumcised and made Mahomedans and slaves, and the girls are drafted into the already crowded harems of the rajahs." The same writer gives an instance or two of the manner in which the subject natives were treated. In 1855, the warlike Kayans of the interior descended the Limbang river and threatened a tribe of Muruts. The Pangiran Makota,[75] virtual governor of Bruni, met them and arranged with the chiefs that for the sum of £700 they should spare these Muruts. Then he set those who were menaced to collect the money. When they had done this and placed the sum in his hands, he pocketed it and returned to Bruni, leaving the Kayans to deal with the tribe after their own sweet will.

Again, in 1857, the same head-hunters threatened another Murut village. Makota had a secret interview with the Kayan chiefs, and then gave out that peace had been concluded. What he had actually done was to deliver over to them to pillage and exterminate the Murut village of Balal Ikan, against which he bore a grudge for having resisted his exactions.

The whole of the north and west of Borneo was in a condition of indescribable wretchedness and hopelessness when Mr. James Brooke appeared on the scene. Oppression the most cruel and grinding, encouragement of piracy and head-hunting by the selfish, unscrupulous pangirans sent from Bruni, were depopulating the fair land. Sarawak, then a very small province, was, as we shall see, in insurrection. Single-handed, with but a comparatively small capital, the whole of which he sank in the country, with no support from the British Government, with no Chartered Company at his back, he devoted his life to transform what had become a hell into what it has become, a peaceful and happy country.

### APPENDIX TO CHAPTER II. LIST OF THE MAHOMEDAN SULTANS OF BRUNI

Taken from the Selesilah (Book of the Descent), preserved in Bruni, by the late Sir Hugh Low, G.C.M.G. Published in the Journal No. 5 of the Straits Branch R.A.S.

> 1. Sultan Mahomed, who introduced the religion of Islam.

> 2. Sultan Akhmed, brother of above, married to the daughter of Ong Sum Ping, Chinese Raja of Kina-batangan. No sons, but one daughter married to —

> 3. Sultan Berkat, from Taif in Arabia. A descendant of the prophet through his grandson Husin. Berkat, the blessed. His real name was Sherif Ali.

> 4. Sultan Suleiman, son of above, who was succeeded by his son —

> 5. Sultan Bulkeiah;[76] towards the end of his reign Pigafetta's first visit to Bruni in 1521 probably took place.

> 6. Sultan Abdul Kahar, son of above. Had forty-two sons, of whom —

> 7. Saif-ul-Rejal succeeded him. During his reign the Spaniards attacked Bruni in 1576 and 1580, taking it on the second occasion.

> 8. Sultan Shah Bruni, son of above. Having no children he abdicated in favour of his brother —

> 9. Sultan Hasan, succeeded by his son.

> 10. Sultan Abdul-Jalil-ul-Akbar, succeeded by his son.

> 11. Sultan Abdul-Jalil-ul-Jehar, who was succeeded by his uncle —

> 12. Sultan Mahomet Ali, son of Sultan Hasan.

> 13. Sultan Abdul Mubin. Son of Sultan Mahomet Ali's sister. He murdered his uncle and usurped the throne. He was worsted in a revolution that lasted twelve years, and was executed.

> 14. Sultan Muaddim, fourth son of Sultan Jalil-ul-Akbar, nephew and son-in-law of Sultan Mahomet Ali. Succeeded by his nephew (half-brother's son) —

> 15. Sultan Nasr Addin, grandson of Sultan Jalil-ul-Akbar.

> 16. Sultan Kemal-Addin, son of Sultan Mahomet Ali, who abdicated in favour of his son-in-law —

> 17. Sultan Mahomet Ali-Udin – on his father's side grandson of Sultan Muaddin, on his mother's side great-great-grandson of Sultan Jalil-ul-Akbar. He died before his father-in-law and great uncle, Sultan Kemal-Addin, who again ascended the throne and was succeeded by his son —

> 18. Sultan Omar Ali Saif-udin. Died 1795. Succeeded by his son —

> 19. Sultan Tej-Walden. Died 1807. He abdicated in favour of his son —

> 20. Sultan Jemal-ul-Alam, who reigned for a few months only, and died in 1796, when his father reascended the throne and was succeeded in 1809 by his half-brother —

> 21. Sultan Khan Zul-Alam, succeeded by his great-nephew and grandson —

> 22. Sultan Omar Ali Saif-udin, second son of Sultan Mahomed Jemal-ul-Alam. Died 1852. He left the throne, by will and general consent of the people, to

> 23. Sultan Abdul Mumin, who was descended from Sultan Kemal-Addin. Died 1885, succeeded by

> 24. Sultan Hasim-Jalilal Alam Akamaddin, son of Sultan Omar Ali Saif-udin. Died 1906.

> 25. Sultan Mahomet Jemal-ul-Alam, son of above.

The above are abridged extracts. The last two sultans were not included in Low's list, which was made in 1893. Low's spelling of the names is followed.

Forrest, op. cit., who obtained his information from Mindanau records, states that about 1475 a Sherip Ali and his two brothers came from Mecca. Ali became the first Muhammadan prince in Mindanau; one brother became King of Borneo (Bruni) and the other King of the Moluccas. As regards the date this agrees with the Bruni records, and the brothers might have borne the same name. (See Mahomet Ali, Omar Ali above.)

According to Chinese records, a Chinese is said to have been King of Bruni in the beginning of the 15th century.[77] This would have been in Ong Sum Ping's time, and it probably refers to him.

## CHAPTER III. THE MAKING OF SARAWAK

James Brooke was born at Benares on April 29, 1803, and was the son of Thomas Brooke of the East India Company's Civil Service. He entered the Company's army in 1819, and took part in the first Burmese war, in which he was severely wounded, and from which he was invalided home in 1825. He had been honourably mentioned in despatches for conspicuous services rendered in having raised a much needed body of horse, and for bravery. Then he resigned his commission, and visited China, Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. There he heard much of the beauty and the wonders of the fairy group of islands forming the Eastern Archipelago, and of the dangers to be encountered there from Malay pirates; islands rich in all that nature could lavish in flower and fruit, in bird and gorgeous butterfly, in diamond and pearl, but "the trail of the serpent was over them all." Very little was known of these islands, few English vessels visited them, the trade was monopolised by the Dutch, who sought to exclude all European nations from obtaining a foothold. They claimed thousands of islands from Sumatra to Papua as within their exclusive sphere of influence, islands abounding in natural products which they exploited imperfectly, and did nothing to develop. This was a dog-in-the-manger policy to which Great Britain submitted.

The young man's ambition was fired; he longed to explore these seas, to study the natural history, the ethnology, to discover gaps in the Dutch imaginary line through which English commerce might penetrate and then expand.

Mr. Brooke made a second voyage to the East in a brig which, in partnership with another, he had purchased and freighted for China; but this venture proved a failure, and the brig and cargo were sold in China at a loss.

In 1835, Mr. Thomas Brooke died, leaving to his son the sum of £30,000. James now saw that a chance was open to him of realising his youthful dream, and he bought a yacht, the Royalist, a schooner of 142 tons burden, armed with six-pounders and several swivels, and, after a preliminary cruise in the Mediterranean to train his crew, he sailed in December 1838, flying the flag of the Royal Yacht Squadron, for that enchanted group of islands —

Those islands of the sea
Where Nature rises to Fame's highest round.[78]

And as he wrote, to cast himself on the waters, like Southey's little book; but whether the world would know him after many days, was a question which, hoping the best, he could not answer with any degree of assurance.

He arrived in Singapore in May, 1839. The Rajah Muda Hasim of Sarawak had recently shown kind treatment to some English shipwrecked sailors, and Mr. Brooke was commissioned by the Governor and the Singapore Chamber of Commerce to convey letters of thanks and presents to the Rajah Muda in acknowledgment of his humanity, exceptional in those days, and a marked contrast to the treatment afforded to the crew and passengers of the Sultana a little later by his sovereign, the Sultan of Bruni, which is recorded further on.[79] This chance diverted Mr. Brooke from his original project of going to Marudu Bay, the place he had indicated as being the best adapted for the establishment of a British settlement, and took him to the field of his life-long labours.

He left Singapore on July 27, 1839, full of hope and confidence that something was to be done, and reaching the West Coast of Borneo surveyed some seventy miles of that coast before entering the Sarawak river, which was not then marked on the charts; for of Borneo at that time very little was known; its interior was a blank upon the maps, and its coast was set down by guess work on the Admiralty charts; so much so, that Mr. Brooke found Cape Datu placed some seventy to eighty miles too far to the east and north, and he was "obliged to clip some hundreds of miles of habitable land off the charts."

Kuching,[80] the capital of Sarawak, is so called from a small stream that runs through the town into the main river, that a few miles below expands and forms a delta of many channels and mouths. The town, which is seated some twenty miles from the open sea, was founded by Pangiran Makota, when Bruni rule was established in Sarawak, and he was sent down as the Sultan's representative a few years previously to the arrival of Mr. Brooke. At this time the population, with the exception of a few Chinese traders and other eastern foreigners, consisted entirely of Bruni Malays to the number of about 800. The Sarawak Malays lived at Katupong,[81] a little higher up, and farther up again at Leda Tanah, under their head chief, the brave Datu Patinggi Ali.

A distinction must be made, which it will be as well to again note here, between the Malays of Bruni and those of Sarawak, in other works described – the former as Borneans, and the latter as Siniawans. They are very different in appearance, manners, and even in language. There are not many Brunis in Sarawak now. Most returned to their own country with Rajah Muda Hasim when he retired there in 1844, and others drifted thither later. All the Malays in Kuching, except a sprinkling of foreigners, are Sarawak Malays, the descendants of the so-called Siniawans.

> The bay that lies between Capes Datu and Sipang is indeed a lovely one. To the right lies the splendid range of Poé, over-topping the lower, but equally beautiful, Gading hills; then the fantastic-shaped mountains of the interior; while to the left the range of Santubong end-on towards you looks like a solitary peak, rising as an island from the sea, as Teneriffe once appeared to me sailing by in the Mæander. From these hills flow many streams which add to the beauty of the view. But the gems of the scene are the little emerald isles that are scattered over the surface of the bay, presenting their pretty beaches of glittering sand, or their lovely foliage drooping to kiss the rippling waves. There is no prettier spot (than the mouth of the Sarawak river); on the right bank rises the splendid peak of Santubong, over 2000 feet in height,[82] clothed from its summit to its base with noble vegetation, its magnificent buttresses covered with lofty trees, showing over a hundred feet of stem without a branch, and at its base a broad beach of white sand fringed by graceful casuarinas, waving and trembling under the influence of the faintest breeze, and at that time thronged by wild hogs.[83]

On August 15, the Royalist cast anchor off the capital, and Mr. Brooke had an interview with the Rajah Muda, presented the letters and gifts, and was very graciously received. He was allowed to make excursions to Lundu, Samarahan, and Sadong, large rivers hitherto unknown to Europeans, and he added some seventy miles to his survey of the coast; but as the Malays and most of the Dayak tribes were in insurrection in the interior, travelling there was unsafe.

The Rajah Muda Hasim, the Bandahara of Bruni and the heir-presumptive to the throne, was a plain, middle-aged man, with gracious and courtly manners, amiable and well disposed, but weak and indolent. He was placed in a difficult position, which he had not the energy or the ability to fill. The Sultan of Bruni had confided the district of Sarawak some years previously to the Pangiran Makota as governor, a man utterly unprincipled, grasping, selfish, cruel, and cowardly, but "the most mild, the most gentlemanly rascal you can conceive";[84] and by his exactions and by forced labour at the antimony mines, he had driven the Sarawak Malays, as well as the Land-Dayaks, into open revolt. They proclaimed their independence of Bruni, and asserted that submission to the Sultan had been voluntary on their part, and on stipulated conditions that had not been carried out. For three years they had carried on their struggle against the Bruni tyrants, but, though far from being reduced, it became evident to them that unaided they could not attain their freedom. Surrender meant death to the chiefs and abject slavery to the people, and to their womankind something far worse than either, so in their extremity they appealed to the Dutch. A year before Mr. Brooke's arrival they had invited the Dutch to plant the Netherlands flag in their camp, and afterwards had sent an emissary to Batavia to beg the assistance of the Governor-General, but open assistance was refused, though the Sultan of Sambas appears to have constantly supplied the rebels with ammunition and provisions. As Mr. Brooke had warned the Pangiran Makota, who had reason to fear Dutch aggression, the danger was not an open violation of their independence, but their coming on friendly terms – they might make war after having first gained a footing, not before. The Dutch had made great efforts to establish trade with Sarawak, in other words, to monopolise it, and through their vassal, the Sultan of Sambas, had offered assistance to open the antimony mines.

The Sultan of Bruni had sent his uncle, the Rajah Muda Hasim, to reduce the rebels, but without withdrawing Makota and checking his abuse of authority. A desultory war had been carried on without success under the direction of Makota, who was too cowardly himself to lead his Malay and Dayak levies into action, to storm the stockades of the insurgents, and to pursue them to their strongholds. The consequence was that anarchy prevailed, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital.

There was something in the frank eye, in the cheery self-confidence of Brooke that captivated the timid little Rajah Muda, who was not only unable to cope with the Malays in revolt, but was afraid of his neighbours, the Dutch, lest they should make the disturbances an excuse for intervention and annexation, and he hoped in his extremity to obtain some help from the British.

"Which is the cat and which is the mouse?" he asked in reference to the rival powers. "Britain is unquestionably the mouser," replied Brooke. But he did not add that the mouser was so gorged and lazy as only occasionally to stretch forth a paw.

Mr. Brooke bade his friends good-bye on September 20, after having received a pressing invitation from the Rajah Muda to revisit him, and he begged Brooke not to forget him. Leaving the Royalist at Muaratebas, Brooke visited the Sadong river, where he made the acquaintance of Sherip Sahap,[85] a powerful half-bred Arab chief and ruler of that river, who in later days was to give Brooke so much trouble. He returned to the Royalist on the 27th, and intended to sail the next morning, but was delayed by a startling incident that gave him his first experience of the piratical habits of the Saribas Dayaks. The boat of Penglima Rajah (the Rajah's captain), who was to pilot the Royalist over the bar, and which was lying inshore of the yacht, was attacked in the middle of the night, but the report of a gun and the display of a blue light from the yacht caused the Dayaks to decamp hurriedly, though not before they had seriously wounded the Penglima and three of his crew. Mr. Brooke waited until the wounded were sufficiently recovered to be sent to Kuching, and, after he had paid a flying visit to that place at the urgent request of the Rajah, sailed for Singapore on October 3.

The history of his late cruise, to quote Mr. Brooke, had agitated the society in Singapore, and whilst the merchants presented him with an address of thanks, the Governor became cooler towards him. The former foresaw an access of trade, the latter was nervous of political embarrassments.

> He would fain have me lay aside all politics, but whilst I see such treachery and baseness on one part (the Dutch), and such weakness, imbecility, and indifference on the other (the English), I will continue to upraise my voice at fitting seasons. I will not leave my native friends to be deceived and betrayed by either white nation, and (what the governor does not like) I will speak bold truths to native ears.

The Dutch trading regulations weighed on this island as they did on all others within their influence. Sir Stamford Raffles, in his History of Java, 1830, tells us that by an edict of 1767, trading in opium, pepper, and all spices was prohibited in the Archipelago to all persons under pain of death, and other severe penalties were imposed upon those trading in other commodities. The quantity of gunpowder and shot that might be carried by any vessel was restricted, and the punishment for carrying more than was permitted was the confiscation of the vessel and corporal punishment. Vessels were not allowed to sail from any part of the Java coast where there was not a Company's Resident. Those from Banka and Beliton could only trade to Palembang (Sumatra). Navigation from Celebes and Sumbawa was prohibited under pain of confiscation of vessel and cargo. The China junks were permitted to trade at Batavia and Banjermasin alone. In all there were thirty-one articles of restriction, "serving to shackle every movement of commerce, and to extinguish every spirit of enterprise, for the narrow, selfish purposes of what may be called the fanaticism of gain." The consequence was that honest traffic was paralysed, and an opportunity and indirect encouragement given to piracy. Indeed, the Dutch winked at this as it hampered smuggling by European and native traders. They resented it only when their own trade was interfered with by the marauders.

After visiting the Celebes, where he spent four months, Mr. Brooke sailed for Sarawak from Singapore on August 18, 1840. His kindly feeling for the Rajah Muda Hasim prompted him to pay another visit to Sarawak, taking it on his way to Manila and China. He found the condition of the country as distracted as ever, "with no probability of any termination of a state of affairs so adverse to every object which I had in view," and so decided to quit the scene and proceed on his voyage. On notifying his departure to the Rajah, he was urgently pressed to remain; every topic was exhausted to excite his compassion. The Rajah laid his difficulties before him, and expressed "his resolution to die here rather than abandon his undertaking – to die deserted and disgraced"; and it was compassion for his miserable situation that induced Mr. Brooke to alter his intention.

The rebellion had lasted for nearly four years, and for the efforts made to quell it might well last for a century, and the whole country, except Kuching, become independent. Starvation had compelled many of the Land-Dayaks to submit, but that was the only advantage that had been gained. Hasim was in ill odour at Bruni because he had effected nothing, and the Orang Kaya di Gadong, a Bruni minister, had been sent by the Sultan to stir him up to greater activity. But how to exert himself, how with cowardly pangirans to come to close quarters with the rebels he could not see, and in his helplessness and discouragement he caught at the opportunity offered by the arrival of Brooke.

With some reluctance Mr. Brooke consented to assist Hasim against the insurgents, and proceeded to Siniawan; but after having been up-river a short time he returned to Kuching, disgusted by the supineness and inertness of Makota and the other leaders, and announced his intention of sailing for Manila. Hasim saw that Brooke's departure would deprive him of his last chance of reducing the rebels, and that he would have to return to Bruni in disgrace. Again he urged Brooke to stay, and he offered him the country if he would return up-river and take command of his forces. "He offered me," wrote Brooke, "the country of Siniawan and Sarawak, with its government and trade;" in addition he offered to grant him the title of Rajah.

Hasim had been placed in Sarawak for a purpose, which he was wholly unable to effect; as he was heir-presumptive[86] to the throne of Bruni, he was impatient at what he considered his exile from the capital. Could the insurrection be subdued he would be reinstated in the favour of his nephew, and might return to Bruni to defeat the machinations of his enemies there, leaving the government of Sarawak in the strong hands of Brooke.

Mr. Brooke hesitated for some time, as the offer had been imposed by necessity, but finally agreed, and promised the assistance required. With ten of his English crew and two guns, he joined the Rajah's mixed force of Malays, Dayaks, and Chinese, and proceeded against the insurgents. As was their wont, the pangirans in command hung back and would not expose their precious persons to danger, with the notable exception of the Pangiran Bedrudin, half-brother to the Rajah Muda Hasim. This was Brooke's first meeting with Bedrudin. He was greatly impressed with his frank but overawing and stately demeanour, and a warm friendship soon sprang up between them, which lasted until the death of this ill-fated prince, who justly earned a reputation for bravery and constancy, the only one of the royal princes of Bruni in whom these qualities were combined.

To Mr. Brooke's regret, Bedrudin was shortly withdrawn by his brother, and the other pangirans, led by Makota, thwarted him in every forward movement, to disguise their own cowardice. Finally, after several bloodless engagements and bombardments, communication was opened with Sherip Mat Husain,[87] one of the rebel leaders, and he came to see Mr. Brooke under a flag of truce, which would have received little respect had it not been for the stern measures taken by the latter. This meeting led to an interview between the Malay rebel chiefs and Mr. Brooke, and they submitted, but only on the understanding that Brooke was henceforth to be the Rajah, and that he would restrain the oppression of the pangirans. On these terms they laid down their arms, and then it was with great difficulty that Brooke succeeded in wringing from the Rajah Muda a consent that their lives should be spared, and that consent was only reluctantly given on Brooke rising up to bid the Rajah Muda farewell; but the wives and children of the principal chiefs, to the number of over one hundred, were taken from them by Hasim as hostages. They "were treated with kindness and preserved from injury or wrong."[88]

Some delay ensued in the investiture of Brooke with the governorship. Hasim was disposed to shuffle, and Makota, who feared his exactions would be interfered with, used all his power to prevent it. Hoping it would content Brooke, the Rajah Muda had drawn up an agreement which was only to the purport that he was to reside in Sarawak in order to seek for profit, an agreement which the Rajah Muda explained was merely to be shown to the Sultan in the first place, and that it was not intended as a substitute for that which had been agreed upon between themselves, and would be granted in due course. Hasim was between two stools: his duty in respect to his promise to Brooke, whose friendship and support were necessary to him; and his fear of the party led by Makota in Sarawak, but still more powerfully represented in Bruni, who foresaw, as well as he did himself, the end of their rule of tyranny if once such an advocate for reform as Mr. Brooke were allowed to gather up the reins of power.

Brooke accepted this equivocal arrangement, and, trusting in the Rajah Muda's good faith, to establish trade and communication with Singapore, went to the expense of buying and freighting the schooner Swift of ninety tons with a general cargo. On her arrival from Singapore the Rajah Muda took over the whole cargo, promising antimony ore in exchange, but this promise also he showed no intention of fulfilling – in fact it never was fulfilled. After this cargo had been obtained the Rajah Muda became cool to Brooke, evaded all discussion about the settlement of the country, and even went so far as to deny that he had ever made the unsolicited promise to transfer the government to him; and a plot was attempted to involve him in a dispute with the Dutch at Sambas.

To ruin Mr. Brooke's prestige with the Land-Dayaks, Malays, and Chinese, as their protector, a crafty scheme was devised by Makota, to which he induced the Rajah to grant his consent. He invited a party of 2500 Sea-Dayaks from Sekrang to ascend the Sarawak river and massacre the Land-Dayaks, Malays, and Chinese in the interior. They arrived at Kuching, and, with the addition of a number of Malays as guides, started up the river. But Brooke, highly incensed, retired to the Royalist, and at once prepared that vessel and the Swift for action. This had the desired effect. Hasim was cowed; "he denied all knowledge of it; but the knowledge was no less certain, and the measure his own."[89] He threw the blame on Makota, and, yielding to Brooke's insistence, sent a messenger up river after the fleet to recall it, – a command that could not be disobeyed, as Brooke held command of the route by which they must return. Sulkily and resentfully did the Sekrang Dayaks return, without heads, and without plunder. And for Makota it was a case of the biter bit, as he had unwittingly enhanced Brooke's prestige. The oppressed people now learnt that Brooke was not only determined to protect them, but that he had the power to do it – a power greater than Makota's; and this strengthened his hands, for many who had wavered through doubt on this point and fear of Makota, now threw in their lot with him, as Makota was shortly to discover to his cost.

> "The very idea," wrote Brooke in his Journal, "of letting 2500 wild devils loose in the interior of the country is horrible. What object can the Malays[90] have in destroying their own country and people so wantonly? The Malays take part in these excursions, and thirty men joined the Sekrangs on the present occasion, and consequently they share the plunder, and share largely. Probably Muda Hasim would have twenty slaves (women and children), and these twenty being redeemed at the low rate of twenty reals each makes 400 reals, besides other plunder amounting to one or two hundred reals more. Inferior pangirans would, of course, take likewise."

Mr. Brooke had now been put off for five months, and for six weeks had withdrawn from all intercourse with Rajah Muda Hasim. As he wrote, "I have done this man many benefits; and, if he prove false after all his promises, I will put that mark of shame upon him that death would be lighter." This was no idle threat, for he sent a final demand to the Rajah Muda either to perform his promise or to repay him all his outlay, and a warning that should Hasim do neither he would take sure means to make him; and the means were at hand, for on his return from Singapore Mr. Brooke had found the people of Sarawak again at issue with their ruler, and had once more thrown off their allegiance to the Sultan. They then offered him that allegiance, and their support to drive Rajah Muda Hasim and his followers out of the country; this offer was, however, declined. But a circumstance occurred that precipitated matters. Makota attempted to poison Brooke's interpreter by mixing arsenic with his rice. Through the indiscretion of a subordinate the plot was discovered, and Brooke immediately laid the facts before the Rajah Muda, as well as "a little treasury" of grievances and crimes against Makota, and demanded an inquiry. "The demand, as usual, was met by vague promises of future investigation, and Makota seemed to triumph in the success of his villainy, but the moment for action had now arrived, and my conscience told me that I was bound no longer to submit to such injustice, and I was resolved to test the strength of our respective parties."[91] The Royalist's guns were loaded, and her broadside brought to bear, and Mr. Brooke landed with a small armed party. He demanded and immediately obtained an audience, and pointed out Makota's tyranny and oppression of all classes, and his determination to attack him, and drive him out of the country. Not a single man upheld Makota, whilst the Malays rallied around Mr. Brooke. This was a test of public opinion to which Makota had to bow, and he was deposed from his governorship. Mr. Brooke's public installation immediately followed, the Rajah Muda Hasim informing the people that he was henceforth to rule over them. On the 24th of September, 1841, a memorable day in the history not only of Sarawak but of the whole of North-Western Borneo, he was declared Rajah and Governor of Sarawak, amidst the roar of cannon and a general display of flags and banners on the shore and the vessels on the river.[92]

On that day he became Rajah of Sarawak, though a feudatory Rajah, a position which he was not content to hold for long, as such a position would have proved untenable.

Sarawak was then of very limited extent; it was a little governorship extending from Cape Datu to the mouth of the Sadong, and included, besides smaller streams, the Lundu, Sarawak, and Samarahan rivers; and this district, about 3000 square miles in area, is, with the inclusion of the Sadong river, now known as Sarawak Proper. In the days of Hasim Sarawak was not a raj, but a province under a governor. Hasim was not actually the Rajah of Sarawak, though his high birth gave him the right to the courtesy title of Rajah. His real title was the Pangiran Muda;[93] Muda is inseparable from the title, and was not a part of his name. Pangiran Muda, the heir to the throne, is the correct Bruni title. Rajah Muda (young Rajah) also means heir-apparent.

The districts from Sarawak up to Bintulu, and beyond, formed separate provinces, and were under separate governors, but Hasim's high rank naturally gave him some influence over these officials. Sadong was governed by Sherip Sahap, his subjects being Land-Dayaks; his power, however, extended to the head of that river. Sherip Japar of Lingga, Sherip Mular of Sekrang, and Sherip Masahor of Serikei, held nominal authority only over the main population of their respective districts occupied by the Sea-Dayaks, for these people acknowledged no government, and lived in independence even in the vicinity of the Malays. Such, moreover, was the case with the Saribas, which was nominally governed by Malay chiefs. The districts of Muka, Oya, and Bintulu were under Bruni pangirans, but, having only Melanaus to govern, their control was complete. In the Baram, a river inhabited by warlike Kayans and Kenyahs, the Malays, nominal rulers and traders, lived on sufferance alone, and so it was in the Sea-Dayak countries of the Batang Lupar, Saribas, and Rejang. Over the Malays, the Land-Dayaks, and the Melanaus, the Bruni Government had power – the Sea-Dayaks and Kayans scorned it. The sherips, as the title denotes, are of Arab origin, and they claim descent from the Prophet. They are half-breeds, and were dangerous men. Earl, in his Eastern Seas, 1837, says: —

> "The pirates who infest the Archipelago consist wholly of the free Mahomedan states in Sumatra, Lingin, Borneo, Magindano, and Sulu (and he should have added of the Malay Peninsula), those natives who have remained uncontaminated by the detestable doctrines of the Arabs, never being known to engage in like pursuits."

Again: —

> The genuine Arabs are often high-minded, enterprising men, but their half-caste descendants who swarm in the Archipelago comprise the most despicable set of wretches in existence. Under the name of religion they have introduced among the natives the vilest system of intolerance and wickedness imaginable; and those places in which they have gained an ascendency[94] are invariably converted into dens of infamy and piracy.

Sir Stamford Raffles says "they are commonly nothing better than manumitted slaves, and they hold like robbers the offices they obtain as sycophants, and cover all with the sanctimonious veil of religious hypocrisy."

And such were the sherips of Borneo with whom the English Rajah had to deal, and whose power he eventually broke. There are many of these to this day in Sarawak, but they have been converted into harmless members of the community, and some have been good Government officials, notably Sherip Putra, who died in June, 1906, after having served the Government well and faithfully for twenty-two years; and he was the son of Sherip Sahap, and the nephew of Sherip Mular.

The condition of the country on Rajah Brooke's accession is best described in his own words. After relating the devastations committed by the piratical and head-hunting Dayaks of Saribas and Sekrang, the Rajah goes on to say: —

> It is of the hill Dayaks,[95] however, I would particularly write, for a more wretched, oppressed race is not to be found, or one more deserving the commiseration of the humane. Though industrious they never reap what they sow; though their country is rich in produce, they are obliged to yield it all to their oppressors; though yielding all beyond their bare sustenance, they rarely can preserve half their children, and often – too often – are robbed of them all, with their wives.[96] All that rapacity and oppression can effect is exhausted, and the only happiness that ever falls to the lot of these unhappy tribes is getting one tyrant instead of five thousand. Indeed, it is quite useless to try to explain the miserable condition of this country, where for the last ten years there has been no government; where intrigue and plunder form the occupation of all the higher classes; where a poor man to possess beyond his clothes is a crime; where lying is a virtue, religion dead, and where cheating is so common; and last, where the ruler, Muda Hasim, is so weak, that he has lost all authority except in name and observance.

And further: —

> All those who frequent the sea-shore lead a life of constant peril from roving Dayaks and treacherous Malays, and Illanuns and Balaninis, the regular pirates. It is a life of watchfulness, hide-and-seek, and fight or flight, and in the course of each year many lose their lives or their liberty.

> This is the country I have taken upon myself to govern with small means, few men, and, in short, without any of the requisites which could insure success; I have distraction within and intrigue abroad, and I have the weakest of the weak,[97] a rotten staff to depend upon for my authority.

To add to his troubles, the season was one of famine following on intestine troubles. So poor were the people, that, again to quote the Rajah: "daily, poor wretches in the last stage of starvation float down the river, and crawl to my house to beg a little, little rice."

One of the first acts of the Rajah was to obtain the return to their families of the women and children of the late rebel Malay chiefs, who had been detained by Hasim now for nine months. He then recalled the Sarawak Malays, who, after submission to Hasim, had retired with their chiefs to distant parts, not trusting the good faith of their Malay Rajah and his right-hand man, Makota. The Bruni datus appointed by the former Governor were displaced, and the old Sarawak Malay datus, who had been in rebellion against the Bruni Government, and who owed their lives to Rajah Brooke's intercession, were reinstated, and in their families the offices remain to this day. Who these chiefs were at that time there seems to exist some doubt, with the exception of the premier datu, the Datu Patinggi Ali, who fell gallantly fighting for the Government three years after he had been reinstated, and the Datu Temanggong Mersal. The old Datu Bandar, Rancha, had died before this, and no one appears to have succeeded him directly, but Datu Patinggi Ali's son-in-law, Haji Abdul Gapur, and his son Muhammad Lana, evidently held office of some kind as native chiefs. On the Datu Patinggi's death, Haji Gapur succeeded him in office, and Muhammad Lana became the Datu Bandar. When Haji Gapur was dismissed in 1854, another son of the Datu Patinggi Ali, Haji Bua Hasan, was made the Imaum, and a few years afterwards Datu Imaum, but no one was then, or has since been, appointed to the office of Datu Patinggi.

On Muhammad Lana's death, his brother Haji Bua Hasan became Datu Bandar, and, shortly afterwards, another relative, Haji Abdul Karim, was appointed Datu Imaum, and he was succeeded on his death in 1877 by Haji Muhammad Taim, the youngest son of the Datu Patinggi Ali. The Datu Bandar, Haji Bua Hasan, died in harness in 1905, over one hundred years of age, and has been succeeded by his son, Muhammad Kasim, formerly the Datu Muda; another son, Haji Muhammad Ali, is the Datu Hakim. These offices are not hereditary, so this narration will show how well the family of gallant old Patinggi Ali, the direct descendant of the original founder of Sarawak, Rajah Jarom, with the sole exception of Haji Gapur, have earned and retained the confidence of the Government, and how honourably they have maintained their position.

The Datu Temanggong Mersal belonged to another family, but he and his sons were not the less staunch; the eldest, brave Abang Pata, rendered the Government very signal services, and the younger, Muhammad Hasan, succeeded his father as Temanggong.

The only one who betrayed the trust reposed in him was the Datu Patinggi Haji Gapur. Of him, as well as the others, we shall hear more in the sequel.

About the same time that the old chiefs were reinstated the Rajah instituted a Court of Justice, in which he presided, and was assisted in dispensing justice by the brothers of Rajah Muda Hasim, and he promulgated the following simple laws, of which this is a summary: —

> James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak, makes known to all men the following regulations: —

> 1. That murder, robbery, and other heinous crimes will be punished according to the written laws of Borneo;[98] and no man committing such offences will escape, if, after fair inquiry, he be found guilty.

> 2. All men, whether Malays, Chinese, or Dayaks are permitted to trade or to labour according to their pleasure, and to enjoy their gains.

> 3. All roads will be open, and all boats coming from other parts are free to enter the river and depart without let or hindrance.

> 4. Trade, in all its branches, will be free, with the exception of antimony ore, which the Governor holds in his own hands, but which no person is forced to work, and which will be paid for at a proper price when obtained.

> 5. It is ordered that no persons going amongst the Dayaks shall disturb them or gain their goods under false pretences. The revenue will be collected by the three Datus bearing the seal of the Governor, and (except this yearly demand from the Government) they are to give nothing to any other person; nor are they obliged to sell their goods except they please, and at their own prices.

> 6. The revenue shall be fixed, so that every one may know certainly how much he has to contribute yearly to support the Government.

> 7. Weights and measures shall be settled and money current in the country, and doits[99] introduced, that the poor may purchase food cheaply.

> 8. Obedience to the ordinances will be strictly enforced.

The Rajah's next step was to redress some of the wrongs to which the unhappy people had been subjected, and by ameliorating their condition to gain their confidence. The Rajah Muda Hasim and his brothers were in his way, "and the intriguing, mean, base Brunis, who depended upon the support of the pangirans to escape punishment when guilty;"[100] but, nevertheless, at the end of the year he was able to write that he had done much good – that he had saved the lives of many people, restored many captives to their families, and freed many slaves from bondage, and above all, that he had repressed vice, and had assisted the distressed.

The Rajah had also to safeguard his country; to prepare to take the offensive against the Malays and Sea-Dayaks of the Sekrang and Saribas; and to guard against the plots and designs of his neighbours the sherips, who viewed with no friendly eye the establishment of a government in Sarawak, having as its principal objects the suppression of piracy and lawlessness. It was a menace to them, and they knew it, and to retain their power they were prepared to go to any length. Already Sherip Sahap and his brother Sherip Mular had sent people against the Sempro and Sentah Dayaks; and the former had endeavoured to withdraw the allegiance of the datus from the Rajah, but in this he failed. As a defensive measure the Rajah built a fort and palisaded his little town. He also constructed war-boats for the protection of the coast, and to take the offensive, which he saw must be inevitable.

The Rajah soon showed the Saribas the power of his arm. Thirteen of their large war-boats appeared off the coast on a piratical cruise, and these were met and attacked by three of the Rajah's well-armed boats and driven back with heavy loss. Retaliation was threatened, and the Dayaks prepared, but it was a long time before they again appeared, and the terror of Brooke's name kept them off Sarawak. At this time Sherip Sahap also received a lesson. He had sent a Pangiran Bedrudin to Kuching on a secret mission, and the pangiran on his way down river fell in with and attacked a Chinese boat, wounding two of the crew, one mortally. The Rajah immediately gave chase, and after eight days came up with them. One of the pangiran's crew, a Lanun penglima, amoked, but was killed by the Datu Patinggi Ali before he could do any harm; the rest surrendered, and were taken to Kuching, where the pangiran, and another, a relation of his, were executed, and the crew imprisoned.

A month later, two Singgi Dayak chiefs, Pa Rimbun and Pa Tumo, for killing Segu Dayaks within the State, were arrested and executed. These examples showed his neighbours that the Rajah was determined to protect his people; and it showed the people that the law would be administered with an equal and firm hand.

But as yet the ratification of his appointment had not been made, and on July 14th, 1842, the Rajah left for Bruni to obtain from the Sultan the confirmation of his nomination by Hasim, and to effect, if possible, a reconciliation between the Sultan and his uncle, as he was naturally desirous to get the latter, his brothers, and their Bruni followers, away from Sarawak, so as to give stability to the Government, and to prevent a needless drain upon the treasury. Another object the Rajah had in view was to obtain the release of about twenty-five Lascars belonging to an English ship, the Lord Melbourne, which had lately been wrecked, and who had found their way to Bruni, where they were being detained in captivity.

As it happened, another English ship, the Sultana, had about eighteen months previously been wrecked on the N.W. coast, struck by lightning, and the captain, his wife, two passengers, one a lady, and some English seamen, had escaped to Bruni in the long boat; the Lascars had landed farther north, and had been captured and sold into slavery by Sherip Usman. The Sultan seized these unfortunate people, and robbed them of their money, some jewels, and their boat. He further compelled them to sign bonds to himself for considerable sums of money, and he had treated them with harshness and inhumanity.

On hearing of this Mr. Brooke had sent his yacht, the Royalist, to Bruni to obtain their release, but this had been refused by the Sultan, and then he communicated with Singapore. The East India Company's Steamer Diana was despatched to Bruni, ran up the river and pointed its guns on the palace. The Sultan was so thoroughly alarmed that he surrendered the captives, after a detention of eight months, and the dread of the "fire-ship" remained on him, so that when the Rajah arrived he was in a compliant mood, and received him most cordially.

It may be as well here to give a description of Bruni and of its Court.

The Bruni river flows into a noble bay, across which to the north lies the island of Labuan. Above the town the river is very small, and rises but some fifteen to twenty miles inland. Where the town is, the river is very broad, forming a large lake. The town is commanded by hills once under cultivation; on an island at the mouth of the entrance are the shattered remains of an old Portuguese fort, which was still standing, though ruinous, when Hunt visited the place in 1809. The town itself has been designated the "Venice of Borneo" by old writers, a description to which the Italian Beccari rightly objected,[101] and is mainly built on piles driven into the mud on a shallow in the middle of the lake, the houses occupying wooden platforms elevated some ten feet above the reach of the tide. Communication between them is effected by canoes, in which the women daily go through the town selling provisions. It is, in a word, similar to the palafitte villages found in prehistoric times in the lakes of Switzerland and Lombardy. A part of the town, including the houses of the Sultan and the wazirs, is situated on the left bank of the river. It is the Bruni of Pigafetta's time, though sadly reduced in size and importance. Then the Sultan's palace was enclosed by a strong brick wall,[102] with barbicans mounting fifty-six cannon, now it is but a roughly built barn-like shed. Gone are the richly caparisoned elephants, and gone too is all the old pride, pomp, and panoply, including the spoons of gold, which particularly struck the old voyager.[103] Bruni has no defences now, but, at the period of which we are writing, there were batteries planted on each side of the inlet commanding the approach, also two forts on the heights, and one battery on a tongue of land that looked down the estuary, and which could rake a fleet advancing towards the town, whilst the batteries on the two banks poured in a flank fire.

When the tide goes out the mud is most offensive to European nostrils, as all the filth and offal is cast into it from the platforms, and left there to decompose. The town at the time of the Rajah's visit, was in a condition of squalid wretchedness – the buildings, all of wood and leaf matting, were in a tumbledown state; and the population was mainly composed of slaves and the hangers on of the Sultan, the nobles, and other members of the upper classes. The Sultan was a man past fifty years of age, short and puffy in person, with a countenance indicative of imbecility. In his journal the Rajah wrote:

> His right hand is garnished with an extra diminutive thumb, the natural member being crooked and distorted.[104] His mind, indexed by his face, seems to be a chaos of confusion, without dignity and without good sense. He can neither read nor write, is guided by the last speaker; and his advisers, as might be expected, are of the lower order, and mischievous from their ignorance and their greediness. He is always talking, and generally joking; and the most serious subjects never meet with five minutes' consecutive attention. His rapacity is carried to such an excess as to astonish a European, and is evinced in a thousand mean ways. The presents I made him were unquestionably handsome, but he was not content without begging from me the share I had reserved for the other pangirans; and afterwards solicited mere trifles such as sugar, pen-knives, and the like. To crown all he was incessantly asking what was left in the vessel, and when told the truth – that I was stripped bare as a tree in winter – he frequently returned to the charge.

The Court at Bruni consisted of the Pangiran Mumin, the Sultan's uncle by marriage, a fairly well-disposed man, though a friend of Makota, but of no ability, avaricious, and with the mind of a huckster, who afterwards became Sultan. There were several uncles of the Sultan, but they were devoid of influence, and were mostly absent in Sarawak, whereas the Pangiran Usup, an illegitimate son of Sultan Muhammad Tejudin, and consequently a left-handed uncle to the reigning Sultan, – a man crafty, unscrupulous, and ambitious, – held sway over the mind of his nephew, and induced him to look with suspicion on his uncles of legitimate birth. This man was in league with the pirates, and a determined opponent of British interference. Consequently, though outwardly most friendly, he was bitterly opposed to the white Rajah, against whom he was already plotting to accomplish his eviction, or his death. Though Pangiran Usup was well aware of the Rajah's determination to stamp out piracy and oppression, yet he was not wise enough to foresee that to measure his strength against a chivalrous and resolute Englishman, who had even a stronger support behind him than those forces he was already slowly and surely gathering around himself, must be futile, and that it would end in his own ruin. Among the Sultan's legitimate uncles the only man of ability and integrity was the Pangiran Bedrudin, who had accompanied the Rajah to Bruni, and who was always frank with him and supported his schemes.

The Rajah had daily interviews with the Sultan, who expressed a great personal regard for him, and frequently swore "eternal friendship," clasping his hand and repeating "amigo saya, amigo saya."[105] He readily confirmed the cession made by Rajah Muda Hasim, being satisfied with the amount promised as his share of the Sarawak revenue, and said, "I wish you to be there; I do not wish anybody else; you are my amigo, and it is nobody's business but mine; the country is mine, and if I please to give you all, I can."

The deed to which Rajah Muda Hasim had affixed his seal on September 24, 1841, was to the following effect: —

> That the country and government of Sarawak is made over to Mr. Brooke (to be held under the crown of Bruni), with all its revenues and dependencies, on the yearly payment of 500. That Mr. Brooke is not to infringe upon the customs or religion of the people; and in return, that no person is to interfere with him in the management of the country.

The confirmatory deed was executed on August 1, 1842, and was in tenor and purport similar to that granted by Hasim, with the exception of an additional clause precluding the alienation of Sarawak by the Rajah without the consent of the Sultan.

The Sultan also told the Rajah that it would be a delight to him to welcome both his uncles, Hasim and Bedrudin, back to Bruni, and begged the Rajah to carry for him a friendly letter to the former, conveying assurance that he was completely reconciled to him. Bruni, he said, would never be well until his return. The Lascars of the Lord Melbourne were at once given up, and the Rajah also procured the release of three of the Sultana's Lascars, who had been transferred to Bruni masters. He remained at Bruni for ten days – a period, as he wrote, "quite sufficient to discover to me the nakedness of the land, their civil dissensions, and the total decay of their power, internal and external."

On his return the Rajah received a cordial welcome, for it was believed that he would certainly be killed in Bruni; and on September 18, the deed was read appointing him to hold the government of Sarawak. The ceremony was impressive, but it nearly became tragical. We will give the Rajah's own description of it. After the deed had been read —

> The Rajah (Muda Hasim) descended, and said aloud "If any one present disowns or contests the Sultan's appointment, let him now declare." All were silent. He next turned to the Patinggis and asked them. They were obedient to the will of the Sultan. Then came the other pangirans. "Is there any pangiran or any young Rajah that contests the question? Pangiran der Makota, what do you say?" Makota expressed his willingness to obey. One or two other obnoxious pangirans, who had always opposed themselves to me, were each in turn challenged, and forced to promise obedience. The Rajah then waved his sword, and with a loud voice exclaimed, "Whoever he is that disobeys the Sultan's mandate now received I will separate his skull." At the moment some ten of his brothers jumped from the verandah, and, drawing their long krises, began to flourish and dance about, thrusting close to Makota, striking the pillar above his head, and pointing their weapons at his breast. This amusement, the violence of motion, the freedom from restraint, this explosion of a long pent up animosity, roused all their passions; and had Makota, through an excess of fear or an excess of bravery, started up he would have been slain, and other blood would have been spilt. But he was quiet, with his face pale and subdued, and, as shortly as decency would permit after the riot had subsided, took his leave.

The Rajah now ordered Makota to leave the country, an order that could not be ignored, though he kept deferring his departure on one pretext after another, and it was not until the arrival of the Dido some eight months later that he quitted Sarawak, and that suddenly. He then joined Sherip Sahap at Sadong, and when that piratical chief's power was broken, he retired along with him to Patusan. Makota was captured after the destruction of that place in 1844, but, unfortunately, the Rajah spared his life. He then retired to Bruni, there to continue his plots against the English, and in 1845 was commissioned by the Sultan to murder Rajah Brooke, but found that the execution of this design would be too distinctly dangerous; and, though he bearded the lion in his den, it was only in the guise of a beggar. At Bruni he rose to power, and, as already related in chapter II., became a scourge to the natives in that part of the sultanate. His end was this: – In November, 1858, he headed a raid at Awang in the Limbang to sweep together a number of Bisaya girls to fill his harem, when he was fallen upon by the natives at night time and killed.

The Rajah now set to work in earnest to put the Government on a sound footing. He made no attempt to introduce a brand new constitution and laws, but took what already existed. He found the legal code was just enough on paper, but had been over-ridden and nullified by the lawless pangirans. All that was necessary was to enforce the existing laws, modifying the penalties where too cruel and severe, and introducing fresh laws as occasion required. "I hate," he wrote in October, "the idea of an Utopian government, with laws cut and dried ready for the natives, being introduced. Governments, like clothes, will not suit everybody, and certainly a people who gradually develop their government, though not a good one, are nearer happiness and stability than a government of the best which is fitted at random. I am going on slowly and surely, basing everything on their own laws, consulting all the headmen at every step, instilling what I think right – separating the abuses from the customs." The government which he had displaced was so utterly bad that any change was certain to be accepted by the people with hope of improvement; and when it was found, that by the introduction of a wise system of taxation, which actually doubled the revenue, whilst to the popular mind it seemed to halve their burden – when, moreover, they found that justice was strictly and impartially administered in the courts – they welcomed the change with whole-hearted gratitude. The Rajah associated the native chiefs with himself in the government, and found them amenable to wholesome principles, and on the whole to be level-headed men. By this means mutual confidence was inspired, and the foundation laid of a government, the principle of which was and has ever since been "to rule for the people and with the people," to quote the Rajah writing twenty-two years later, "and to teach them the rights of freemen under the restraints of government. The majority of the "Council"[106] secures a legal ascendency for native ideas of what is best for their happiness, here and hereafter. The wisdom of the white man cannot become a hindrance, and the English ruler must be their friend and guide, or nothing. The citizen of Sarawak has every privilege enjoyed by the citizen of England, and far more personal freedom than is known in a thickly populated country. They are not taught industry by being forced to work. They take a part in the government under which they live; they are consulted upon the taxes they pay; and, in short, they are free men.

"This is the government which has struck its roots into the soil for the last quarter of a century, which has triumphed over every danger and difficulty, and which has inspired its people with confidence."

The revenue of Sarawak was in utter confusion. Over large tracts of country no tax could be enforced, and the Rajah, as he had undertaken, was determined to lighten the load that had weighed so crushingly, and was inflicted so arbitrarily on the loyal Land-Dayaks – loyal hitherto, not in heart, but because powerless to resist. To carry on the government without funds was impossible, and the want of these was now, and for many years to come, the Rajah's greatest trouble. Consequently the antimony ore was made a monopoly of the government, which was a fair and just measure, and to the general advantage of the community, though it was subsequently seized upon as a pretext for accusing the Rajah of having debased his position by engaging in trade. But it was years before the revenue was sufficient to meet the expenditure, and gradually the Rajah sacrificed his entire fortune to pay the expenses of the administration.

In undertaking the government he had three objects in view: —

(1) The relief of the unfortunate Land-Dayaks from oppression.

(2) The suppression of piracy, and the restoration to a peaceable and orderly life, of those tribes of Dayaks who had been converted into marauders by their Malay masters.

(3) The suppression of head-hunting.

But these ends could not be attained all at once. The first was the easiest arrived at, and the news spread through the length and breadth of the island that there was one spot on its surface where the native was not ground to powder, and where justice reigned. The result was that the Land-Dayaks flocked to it. Whole families came over from the Dutch Protectorate, where there was no protection; and others who had fled to the mountains and the jungle returned to the sites of their burnt villages.

How this has worked, on the same undeviating lines of a sound policy, under the rule of the two Rajahs, the following may show. Writing in 1867, on revisiting Sarawak, Admiral the Hon. Sir Henry Keppel said:

> It brought back to my mind some four-and-twenty years ago, when I first came up in the Dido with Sir James Brooke on board, and gave the first and nearly the only help he had in securing his position, thereby enabling him to carry out his philanthropic views for the benefit of a strange race. If he had not succeeded to the full extent of his then sanguine hopes, still there is no man living, or to come, who, single-handed, will have benefited his fellow-creatures to the extent Brooke has. In 1842, piracy, slavery, and head-hunting were the order of the day. The sail of a peaceful trader was nowhere to be seen, not even a fisherman, but along the length of this beautiful coast, far into the interior, the Malays and Dayaks warred on one another. Now how different! Huts and fishing stakes are to be seen all along the coast, the town of Kuching, which on the visit of the Dido, had scarcely 800 inhabitants, now has a population of 20,000. The aborigines, who called themselves warriors, are now peaceful traders and cultivators of rice. The jungle is fast being cleared to make way for farms.

Head-hunting, the third aim which Rajah Brooke held before his eyes, was an ingrained custom of the race which could not be eradicated at once. The utmost that he could effect at first was to prevent the taking of heads of any of the subjects under his rule. All the tribes that were in his raj were to be regarded as friends, and were therefore not to be molested. Any breach of the peace, every murder was severely punished. In a short time head-hunting and intertribal feuds amongst the Sarawak Dayaks were extirpated, and the raj ceased to be a hunting-field for the Sekrang and Saribas Dayaks; but they continued to haunt the coast together with the Lanun and Balenini pirates, and the suppression of piracy was the most serious undertaking of the three, and took many years to accomplish.

Early in 1843, the Rajah visited Singapore to further the interests of his raj, and for a change. His main wish, which he had repeatedly expressed, was to transfer Sarawak to the Crown, and he likewise impressed upon the Government the policy of establishing a settlement at Labuan, and of obtaining a monopoly of the coal in the Bruni Sultanate. He was able to interest the Chinese merchants in the trade of Sarawak. But the most important matter was the immediate suppression of the ravages committed by the pirates, both Dayak and Malay; and here Providence threw across his path, in the person of Captain the Hon. Henry Keppel,[107] the very assistance he required. Between the white Rajah and the Rajah Laut (Sea King), the title by which Keppel became known, and was ever afterwards remembered in Sarawak, a sincere attachment arose. Keppel was attracted by the Rajah's lovable personality, and sympathised with his objects; and, being chivalrous and always ready to act upon his own responsibility, he at once decided to lend all the support in his power, which any other naval officer might have hesitated to have done. The aid he so nobly rendered came at an opportune time, for it not only administered to the pirates a severe lesson, but also taught those inimical to his rule that the white Rajah was not held aloof by his own countrymen, and thus consolidated his power by reassuring the waverers and encouraging the loyal. The kindly and gallant Keppel stands foremost amongst the friends of Sarawak, to which State he rendered not only the splendid services to be recorded in our next chapter, but ever evinced a keen and kindly interest in its welfare, and in its Rajahs, to whom he was ever ready to lend his able support and influence, and of whom the Rajah wrote, "He is my friend and the benefactor of Sarawak."

## CHAPTER IV. THE PIRATES

As we have already mentioned, the second, and by far the most difficult, task that Rajah Brooke had set before him, and was determined to accomplish, was the suppression of piracy, which he rightly described as an evil almost as disgraceful to the European nations who permitted it as to the native States engaged in it.

The principal piratical peoples at the time were the Illanun, or Lanun, the Balenini, the Bajaus, and the Sulus, all living to the north or north-east of Bruni, and consequently far beyond the jurisdiction of the Rajah. To these must be added the Sea-Dayaks of the Saribas and Sekrang, who, led by their Malay allies, though less formidable to trade, were far more destructive of human life.

The Sambas Malays had also been pirates, but at this period had ceased to be such. Earl, who visited Sambas in 1834, says, that "before the arrival of the Dutch Sambas was a nest of pirates. In 1812, having attacked an English vessel, several British men-of-war were sent from Batavia to attack the town. The inhabitants resisted, but were defeated, the fort was razed to the ground, and the guns tumbled into the river." The reoccupation by the Dutch shortly afterwards of this place, Pontianak, and Banjermasin, put some check upon the piratical habits of the Malays in the western and southern States,[108] but the Malays of the eastern shores of Borneo, especially those of Koti, to the north and north-west, were all pirates; and even the people of Bruni were imbued with piratical habits, which were generally inherent in the Malay character, though they were not enterprising enough to be openly piratical, or to do more than encourage their bolder neighbours, from whom they could obtain plunder and slaves cheaply; and near Bruni, within the territory of the Sultan, were several piratical strongholds. All these were under the control of half-bred Arab sherips, as also were the Saribas and the Sekrangs.

The Lanuns are natives of the large island of Mindanau, or Magindanau, the southernmost of the Philippine group. They were known to the Spaniards as "Los Illanos de la laguna," and, in common with all Muhammadans, were classed by them as Moros or Moors. On the lagoon, or bay, of Lanun they live. They were the boldest and most courageous of the pirates, and the most dangerous to Europeans, whom they never hesitated to attack, not even the Dutch gunboats, and to whom, unlike the Balenini pirates, they would never give quarter, owing to a hatred, born of former injustice and inhumanity, received at the hands of those whom they could only have regarded as white barbarians. They became incorrigible and cruel pirates, looking upon piracy as a noble profession, though Dampier, who spent six months amongst them in 1686-7, and who was very hospitably treated, says nothing of piracy, and he gives a full and intelligent account of the island, its inhabitants, and products. He describes the "Hilanoons" as being a peaceable people, who bought foreign commodities with the product of their gold mines. The Spaniards had sometime before occupied the island, but the garrison had to be suddenly withdrawn to Manila, in consequence of a threatened invasion of that place by the Chinese. The Sultan then seized their cannon, demolished their forts, and expelled their friars. Then it was the Dutch they feared; they wished the English to establish a Factory there,[109] and subsequently, in 1775, ceded a small island to the H.E.I. Company for that purpose.

Though the Spanish had a settlement on the western end of the island they were unable to keep the Lanun pirates in check, and on occasions were severely handled by them, as were also the Dutch.

With these pirates were associated the Bajaus or sea-gipsies, a roving people, who lived entirely in their prahus, with their women and children.

The vessels employed by Lanuns on marauding expeditions were sometimes of 60 tons burden, built very sharp in the prow and wide in beam, and over 90 feet in length. A double tier of oars was worked by slaves to the number of 100, and the fighting men would be from 30 to 40; the prahus of the smallest size carried from 50 to 80 in all. The bows of the vessels were solidly built, and fortified with hard wooden baulks capable of resisting a 6-pounder shot; often they were shod with iron. Here a narrow embrasure admitted a gun for a 6 to a 24-pound shot. In addition to this, the armaments consisted of several guns, usually of brass, of smaller calibre. Sometimes the piratical fleets comprised as many as 200 prahus, though the Lanuns usually cruised in small fleets of 20 to 30 sail. They would descend on a coast and attack any village, sack and burn it, kill the defenders, carry away men, women, and children as slaves, slaughter the cattle, and ravage the plantations. A cargo of slaves captured on the east coast of Borneo would be sold on the west coast, and those taken in the south would find a ready market in the north, in Sulu[110] and the Lanun country. Their cruising grounds were extensive – around the coasts of the Philippine islands, Borneo, and Celebes to Sumatra, Java, and the Malay peninsula, through the Moluccas to New Guinea, and even up the Bay of Bengal as far as Rangoon. In 1834, a fleet of these Lanuns swept round the coast of a small island in the Straits of Rhio, opposite Singapore, and killed or carried away all the inhabitants.[111] In addition to their original home in the bay of Lanun, they had settlements in Marudu Bay in the north of Borneo, and towns along the west coast almost as far south as Ambong, and on the east coast to Tungku, and on to Koti. In Marudu their chief was Sherip Usman, who was married to a sister of the Sultan Muda of Sulu, and who was in league with Pangiran Usup, uncle to the Sultan of Bruni, and his principal adviser. Usman supplied the pirates with powder, shot, and guns, and they, on returning from a piratical expedition, paid him at the rate of four captives for every 100 rupees worth of goods with which he had furnished them. Such captives as had been taken in the vicinity of Bruni he would sell to Pangiran Usup for 100 rupees each, who would then demand of their friends and relations Rs. 200 for each. "Thus this vile Sherip, not reckoning the enormous price he charged for his goods in the first instance, gained 500 per cent for every slave, and the Pangiran Usup cleared 100 per cent by the flesh of his own countrymen."

In 1844, Ambong was a flourishing town occupied by an industrious and peaceable people, subjects of the Sultan of Bruni. In 1846, Captain Rodney Mundy, R.N., visited it, and the town was represented by a heap of ruins alone; the inhabitants had been slaughtered, or enslaved to be passed on to Usup, that he might make what he could out of them, by holding them to ransom by their relatives.

The Balenini were hand in glove with the Lanuns, and often associated with them in their expeditions. They issued from a group of islands in the Sulu sea, and acted in complicity with the Sultan of Sulu, whose country was the great nucleus of piracy. They equipped annually considerable fleets to prey upon the commerce with Singapore and the Straits; they also attacked villages, and carried off alike crews of vessels and villagers to slavery, to be crowded for months in the bottom of the pirate vessels, suffering indescribable miseries. Their cruising grounds were also very extensive; the whole circuit of Borneo was exposed to their attacks, except only the Lanun settlements, for hawks do not peck out hawk's een. When pursued and liable to be overtaken, they cut the throats of their captives and threw them overboard, men, women, and children alike. Up to 1848, the principal Balenini strongholds were in Balenini, Tongkil, and Basilan islands, but they were then driven out of the two former islands by the Spaniards, and they established themselves on other islands in the Sulu Archipelago; and Tawi Tawi island, which had always been one of their strongholds, then became their principal one.

Trade with Borneo and the Sulu Archipelago was rendered almost impossible, or at least a very dangerous pursuit, and even merchantmen using the Palawan passage to China, which takes them close along the coast of Borneo, often fell a prey to these pirates.

Earl, writing a year or two before the advent of the late Rajah to Sarawak, remarks in connection with Borneo, that it ought to be considered but "an act of justice to the natives of the Indian Archipelago, whom we have enticed to visit our settlement of Singapore, that some exertion should be made towards the suppression of piracy." He blames the unaccountable indifference and neglect which the British Government had hitherto displayed, and expresses his sympathy for the natives. He considered it his duty to point the way – it was left to the late Rajah to lead in it.

The Natuna, the Anamba, and the Tambilan islands, which stretch across the entrance of the China sea between Borneo and the Malay peninsula, were common lurking haunts of the pirates. Amongst these islands they could find water and shelter; could careen, clean, and repair their prahus; and they were right in the track of vessels bound to Singapore, or northward to the Philippines or China. To replenish their stores and to obtain arms and ammunition they would sail to Singapore in innocent-looking captured prahus, where they found a ready market for their booty amongst the Chinese. Muskets of English make and powder from English factories were found in captured prahus and strongholds. At Patusan a number of barrels of fine gunpowder from Dartford were discovered exactly as these had left the factory in England.

Against these the Rajah was powerless to take the offensive. They had to be left to be reduced or cowed by the spasmodic efforts of British men-of-war. What he urged, though ineffectually, was that a man-of-war should patrol the coast and curb the ruffians. What was actually done, but not until later, was to attack and burn a stronghold or two, and then retire. The pirates fled into the jungle, but returned when the British were gone, rebuilt their houses, and supplied themselves with fresh vessels.

Near at hand were the Saribas and Sekrang Sea-Dayaks occupying the basins of rivers of these names, the Sekrang being an affluent of the Batang Lupar.

In each of these rivers was a large Malay community of some 1000 fighting men who lived by piracy, and who trained the numerous Dayaks, by whom they were surrounded, to the same lawless life that they led themselves, and guided them on their predatory excursions. Here again both Dayaks and Malays were under the influence of Sherips, Mular, his brother Sahap, and others. In course of time these Dayaks became expert seamen, and, accompanied by the Malays, yearly issued forth with fleets composed of a hundred or more bangkongs,[112] sweeping the seas and carrying desolation along the shores of Borneo over a distance of 800 miles.

The Sea-Dayaks soon became aware of their power; and accordingly, both in their internal government and on their piratical expeditions, their chiefs attained an authority superior to that of the Malay chiefs, their titular rulers.

In May, 1843, H.M.S. Dido started on her eventful cruise to Borneo, having the Rajah on board. After passing Sambas, Captain Keppel dispatched the pinnace and two cutters under the first lieutenant, with whom went the Rajah, to cruise along the coast. Lanun pirates were seen, but, easily outsailing the flotilla, escaped. Off Sirhasan, the largest of the group of the Natuna islands, whither the boats had been directed to go, six prahus, some belonging to the Rajah Muda of Rhio (an island close to Singapore, belonging to the Dutch, and under a Dutch Resident), and some to the islanders, mistaking the Dido's boats for those of a shipwrecked vessel, and expecting an easy prey, advanced with boldness and opened fire upon them. They were quickly undeceived, and in a few minutes three out of the six prahus were captured, with a loss of over twelve killed and many wounded. Neither the Rhio Malays nor those of the islands were pirates, and the former under an envoy were collecting tribute for the Sultan of Lingin, but the temptation was irresistible to a people with piracy innate in their character. They protested it was a mistake, and that with the sun in their eyes they had mistaken the boats for Lanun pirates! The little English flotilla had suffered no casualties, and a severe lesson had been administered, which was rightly considered to be sufficient. The wounded were attended to, and, having been liberally supplied with fresh provisions, Lieutenant Wilmot Horton left for Sarawak to rejoin the Dido.

After having been cleverly dodged by three Lanun prahus, the Dido anchored off the Muaratebas entrance on May 13th, and proceeded up to Kuching on the 16th. Keppel described the Rajah's reception by his people as one of undisguised delight, mingled with gratitude and respect, on the return of their newly elected ruler to his country.

The temerity of the pirates had become so great that it was deemed advisable to despatch the little Sarawak gunboat, the Jolly Bachelor, under the charge of Lieutenant Hunt, with a crew of eighteen marines and seamen, to cruise in the vicinity of Cape Datu, and there to await the arrival of a small yacht which was expected from Singapore with the mails, and to escort her to Kuching. Two or three days after they had left, at about 3 o'clock one morning, writes Captain Keppel: —

> The moon being just about to rise, Lieutenant Hunt, happening to awake, observed a savage brandishing a kris, and performing his war-dance on the bit of deck in an ecstasy of delight, thinking in all probability of the ease with which he had got possession of a fine trading boat, and calculating the cargo of slaves he had to sell, but little dreaming of the hornets' nest into which he had fallen. Lieutenant Hunt's round face meeting the light of the rising moon, without a turban surmounting it, was the first notice the pirate had of his mistake. He immediately plunged overboard; and before Lieutenant Hunt had sufficiently recovered his astonishment, to know whether he was dreaming or not, or to rouse his crew up, a discharge from three or four cannons within a few yards, and the cutting through the rigging by the various missiles with which the guns were loaded, soon convinced him there was no mistake. It was as well the men were still lying down when this discharge took place, as not one of them was hurt; but on jumping to their legs, they found themselves closely pressed by two large war-prahus, one on each bow. To return the fire, cut the cable, man the oars, and back astern to gain room, was the work of a minute; but now came the tug-of-war, it was a case of life and death. Our men fought as British sailors ought to do; quarter was not expected on either side; and the quick and deadly aim of the marines prevented the pirates from reloading their guns. The strong bulwarks or barricades, grapeshot proof, across the fore part of the Lanun prahus, through which ports are formed for working the guns, had to be cut away by round shot before the muskets could bear effectually. This done the grape and cannister told with fearful execution. In the meantime, the prahus had been pressing forward to board while the Jolly Bachelor backed astern; but as soon as this service was achieved, our men dropped their oars, and seizing their muskets dashed on: the work was sharp but short, and the slaughter great. While one pirate boat was sinking, and an effort made to secure her, the other effected her escape by rounding the point of rocks where a third and larger prahu, hitherto unseen, came to her assistance, and putting fresh hands on board and taking her in tow, succeeded in getting off, although chased by the Jolly Bachelor, after setting fire to the crippled prize, which blew up and sank.[113]

None of the crew of this prahu survived, and so few in the second prahu, that, when she separated from her consort, the slaves arose and put them to death. They were the same three prahus that had eluded the Dido.

Having satisfied himself as to the character of the Saribas and Sekrang Dayaks, and how the chiefs governing them encouraged their depredations, and having received an appeal from the Rajah Muda Hasim[114] to relieve the cost of the perils it underwent, Captain Keppel resolved to attack the Saribas first, as being the most formidable of the two piratical hordes.

Preparations for the expedition were soon commenced. It was to consist of a native force of 300 Malays, the Dido's three large boats, and the Jolly Bachelor, manned by blue-jackets and marines, all under the command of Lieutenant Wilmot Horton. The datus were opposed to the Rajah going – they thought the risk too great, but on his expressing his determination to do so, and leaving it to them to accompany him or not, their simple reply was, "What is the use of our remaining? If you die, we die; and if you live, we live; we will go with you."[115] The Rajah and Captain Keppel accompanied the expedition in the Dido's gig.

Intelligence of the design was carried far and wide. The Saribas strengthened their defences, and several of the half-bred Arab sherips living nearer Sarawak sent in promises of good conduct. Tribes that had suffered from the depredations of the pirates offered to join in attacking them, and the force thus augmented by several hundreds of Dayaks started early in June.

The first skirmish fell to the lot of Datu Patinggi Ali, who, having been sent on ahead, met a force of seven prahus at the mouth of the Saribas, which he attacked and drove back, after capturing one. Padi, a stockaded town some 60 miles up the Saribas river, and the furthest up of the piratical strongholds, reputed also to be the strongest and most important, was the first attacked, and though defended by two forts and two booms of forest trees stretched across the river, and being crowded with Malay and Dayak warriors, it was carried on the evening of June 11, and the place committed to the flames. The next day some 800 Balau Dayaks,[116] under Sherip Japar of Lingga, joined the force, keen to make reprisals for past injuries.

The enemy, reckoned at about 6000 Dayaks and 500 Malays, had retired up-river, and against them a small force of about 40 blue-jackets and the same number of Malays, under the Rajah and Lieutenant Horton, started the next day. During the night they were repeatedly attacked by the pirates, who, under cover of the darkness, closed in on their assailants, especially where some marines held a post on a cleared height overlooking the river. The pirates lost a good many men, and the next morning, seeing the force again preparing to advance, sent in a flag of truce and sued for mercy. The Rajah then met their chiefs and explained to them that it was in consequence of their acts of piracy that they were now punished; that they had been cautioned two years previously to abstain from these marauding expeditions, and that they had disregarded this monition; he assured them that they would be unmolested if they abstained from molesting others, but that if they continued to prey on their neighbours and to interfere with trading vessels they would receive further castigation.

It was proposed to these people that the towns of Paku and Rembas should be spared, if they would guarantee the future good conduct of the inhabitants. They coolly replied that those people deserved the same punishment, which had better be administered, otherwise they would continue pirating, and would lead the Padi people astray again.

Paku was taken on the 14th, and burnt; here no resistance was met with. The next day the chiefs submitted. On the 17th, Rembas was attacked and taken, the Balau Dayaks, under Sherip Japar, having all the fighting to do. This was the largest and strongest town, and much plunder was secured. After receiving the submission of the Rembas chiefs the expedition returned to Kuching, having, in seven days, destroyed the strongholds of the most powerful and dreaded pirates on the north-west coast of Borneo, who for years had defied both Bruni and Sarawak. Such an impression was produced, that the Sekrangs sent messages promising to abstain from piracy, and offering, if they were spared, to give up a hundred women and children captives; and Sherips Mular and Sahap, fearing the punishment they so richly deserved, sent professions of future good conduct. These were not accepted, but the day of reckoning had to be deferred, for Keppel had received orders to return to China.

The Saribas had suffered, but not the redoubtable Sekrangs, and the former not so severely but that in a couple of years all their losses could be repaired, their stockades be rebuilt, and fresh prahus constructed, and the old story of blood and rapine continued with little intermission, not only by them, but by the Lanuns and Sekrangs as well.

A year was to elapse before Keppel's return; and we will now record in their sequence the few events of interest that happened during this short period.

About a month after the departure of the Dido, the Samarang, Captain Sir Edward Belcher, arrived at Kuching. Sir Edward had been sent, consequent on Rajah Brooke's actions and recommendations, to inquire personally into and report officially upon the affairs and capabilities of north-west Borneo. As Sir Spenser St. John writes —[117]

> This visit was as useless as such visits usually are. What can the most acute naval officer understand of a country during a few days' or weeks' visit? He can describe more or less accurately its outward appearance; but to understand its internal politics is not possible in the time. And yet on such comparatively valueless reports the British Government relies in a majority of cases. Mr. Brooke suffered more than any other pioneer of civilisation from the system.

On getting under way to proceed to Bruni the Samarang grounded on a rocky ledge off the town, and Sir Edward's brief visit was protracted by a fortnight. The ship, which lay in an extremely critical position, was righted and got off the rocks before the Harlequin, Wanderer, Vixen, and Diana arrived to assist her. Accompanied by the Rajah, Sir Edward proceeded to Bruni towards the end of August, but the latter's visit was very short; he saw the Sultan for two hours only, and then, as small-pox was raging in Bruni, departed for Singapore.[118] The principal object of the Rajah's visit was obtained, as he was enabled to bear away a deed granting Sarawak in perpetuity to him and to the heirs of his appointment.

In December the Rajah left for Singapore, and there the next month he received the news of his mother's death. To quote the Rajah, after the first shock, he resolved to seek in activity a relief from the lowness of spirits which he suffered. This led him to join an expedition to punish certain pirates on the coast of Sumatra for injuries done to British ships. The ships employed were the Harlequin, Captain the Hon. G. Hastings; the Wanderer, Captain Seymour, with whom the Rajah sailed, and the East India Company's steamer, the Diana. At Achin[119] they found the once powerful Sultan unable to control or punish his own subjects, and the ships then proceeded to Batu and Murdu, the strongholds of the pirates. The former town was burnt without offering much resistance, but the latter gave them a tough fight of five hours before it was taken. The pirates lost from fifty to seventy men killed and wounded, the English two killed, and about a dozen wounded, amongst whom was the Rajah, who was shot inside the right arm, and had an eyebrow cut in two by a spear. This was on February 12, 1844.

In Singapore the Rajah purchased a new vessel, the Julia, having sold the Royalist; the Julia was fitted as a gunboat. Early in June he returned to Sarawak in the Harlequin.

He found that during his absence, his old enemy, Sherip Sahap, had built many war-boats, and had made great preparations for offensive operations. Kuching was supposed to be his object, and it had been put in a state of defence, but on the Rajah's return Sahap deemed it advisable to retire to the Batang Lupar, and taking with him a large force marked his course with bloodshed and rapine. He then fortified himself at Patusan, below the Sekrang, and the Dayaks were sent out ravaging in every direction. Eight villages were burnt in the Sadong, the Samarahan people were attacked, and many women and children were captured. A party even ventured into Sarawak, and cut off two Singgi Dayaks on their farm, but they did not get off scot free, for the Rajah, starting in the middle of the night, intercepted their return and gave them a sharp lesson.

Patusan,[120] the stronghold of Sherip Sahap, with whom was Pangiran Makota, was on the left-hand bank of the Batang Lupar, about fifteen miles below the Undup stream, up which, about seven miles from the mouth, was the stockaded town of Sahap's brother, Sherip Mular. Besides numerous Malays, these sherips were supported by the Sekrang Dayaks, then estimated to number some 10,000 fighting men, and these warriors, though they might not recognise the power of the sherips over them in other matters, were always ready to respond to a summons to engage in a plundering raid.

Captain Keppel had been long expected, but the Dido had been detained in India, and when she arrived on July 30, with the welcome addition of the H.E.I.C.'s steamer Phlegethon, preparations for the coming expedition against the Batang Lupar were so well forward that it was enabled to start almost immediately. On board the Dido was the Rajah's favourite nephew, midshipman Charles Johnson, who eight years later became the Tuan Muda of Sarawak, and who ultimately succeeded his uncle as Rajah.

The combined force of blue-jackets, Malays, and Dayaks, headed by the Phlegethon, started from Kuching on August 5th, and on the 7th were off Patusan. This place was well fortified, sixty-four brass besides many iron guns were taken there,[121] and its five forts were captured, with heavy loss to the pirates. The attacking party lost only one man killed, the captain of the main-top of the Dido, who was cut in two by a cannon-shot whilst loading the bow-gun of the Jolly Bachelor; close to him was the present Rajah, who fortunately escaped unhurt.

So confident had Sherip Sahap and Pangiran Makota been in the impregnability of their strongholds that they had not taken the usual precaution of sending their women, children, and property of value, to a distant place of refuge. On their flight the unfortunate children were placed in different nooks and corners.

After having completely destroyed the town of Patusan, and Makota's town about a mile above, the expedition moved on upon the 10th. The Phlegethon was taken up as far as the Sekrang, a very bold proceeding considering the dangerous nature of the river, and the force was divided into three divisions, to ascend the Undup, the Sekrang, and the main-river; but the pirates, chiefly Malays, offered such a stubborn resistance in the Undup that these divisions had to be reunited to make a simultaneous attack. The gallant Datu Patinggi Ali here distinguished himself in a hand-to-hand fight with the enemy; it was witnessed by the blue-jackets, who hailed him with three hearty British cheers on his return. It took the force the whole day to cut through the heavy log barriers that had been placed across the river below Mular's town, which the enemy deserted during the night, retiring to a Dayak village some twenty-five miles farther up the river. After an arduous journey of two days the landing-place of the village was reached; here occurred a brush with the pirates, who were pushed back, and old Datu Patinggi nearly covered himself with glory by almost capturing Sherip Mular, who saved himself by ignominiously jumping into the river and swimming ashore. A little later, Captain Keppel and Lieutenant Wade with some seven men surprised a large force of pirates waiting behind a point; these were so taken by surprise that they were easily routed, but Lieutenant Wade rushing on in pursuit was struck by two rifle-shots, and fell at his commander's feet mortally wounded. The Dayak village was then attacked, and the enemy scattered.

On the 15th, the Phlegethon was reached, and on the 17th, a force started up the Sekrang to administer a lesson to the notorious Dayak pirates of that river, who had been making their presence felt in an unpleasant manner, continuously annoying the force at night time by hanging about on the river banks and killing and wounding several of the Malay and Dayak members of the force. The expedition consisted of seven of the Dido's and Phlegethon's boats, and the Jolly Bachelor, with a division of a few light native boats under Datu Patinggi Ali as a vanguard, and the rest of the Sarawak contingent behind as a reserve. On the 19th, the enemy made a determined stand, blocking the advance of Patinggi Ali's division with a formidable array of war-boats, and with thousands of men on each bank, who had selected positions where they could effectively use their javelins and blow-pipes. Instead of falling back upon the main body, old Ali bravely dashed on, followed by his little contingent. A desperate encounter against fearful odds ensued, and before the ships' boats could come to his support the fine old Malay chief[122] had fallen along with a Mr. Steward,[123] and twenty-nine of his devoted followers, fifty-six more being wounded. The gun and rocket fire of the boats soon turned the tables, and the Dayaks retreated from their position with considerable loss. The same day their town was destroyed, and the expedition returned. At Patusan, which was reached on the 22nd, Captain Sir Edward Belcher, with the boats of the Samarang, joined them, but too late to render any service. At Kuching there was barely time to get the sick and wounded into comfortable quarters before news arrived that Sherip Sahap had joined Sherip Japar at Lingga, and was again collecting his followers. With the addition of the Samarang's boats, the force immediately started for Lingga; Sherip Sahap hastily retired, and, though closely pursued, escaped over the border; Sherip Japar was deposed from his governorship of Lingga; and Pangiran Makota was captured and sent a prisoner on board the Phlegethon. The Rajah then held a meeting of all the Malay chiefs of the surrounding country, and in an eloquent speech impressed upon them the determination of the British Government to suppress piracy; dwelt upon the blessings arising from peace and trade, and concluded by saying that the measures lately adopted against piracy were taken for the protection of all the peaceful communities along the coast. "So great was the attention bestowed during the delivery of his speech that the dropping of a pin might have been heard."[124] On September 4th, the force again reached Kuching.

Sherip Sahap, after residing for a short time in the Kapuas, in Dutch Borneo, died of a broken heart at Pontianak. Sherip Mular, who also escaped over the border, subsequently sued for forgiveness, but this was then refused.[125] Sherip Japar, who the previous year had rendered good service against the Saribas pirates, was removed to Ensingai in the Sadong. Pangiran Makota, who so richly deserved death, and who as a matter of policy alone, as well as in the interests of humanity, should have been executed, was spared by the Rajah, and allowed to retire to Bruni, with what results we have already noted.

Early the next year the Saribas and Sekrang Dayaks visited the Rajah at Kuching and formally tendered their submission. The promises then made of future good behaviour would probably have been observed, and those, of which there was now a large party, in favour of peace have been upheld, had the British Government afforded the Rajah continuous support for a short time, even in the shape of a small brig-of-war. "We must progress or retrograde" was the Rajah's timely, though unheeded warning. But the desired support was denied, and gradually the piratical party again became dominant, and in less than two years found themselves in a position once more to defy the Rajah, and to spread terror along the coast. But with this, and their final, though tardy punishment, we shall deal later.

The Rajah seeing how precarious his position was, had offered the cession of Sarawak to the British Crown without remuneration, though he had now laid out £10,000 upon its development. He showed how by developing the trade and the natural wealth of the land through British influence, river after river might be opened up to commerce. He entreated that steady and unremitting efforts should be made for the suppression of piracy. But the Government shrank from the extension of its Colonies, it was afraid of being dragged into a second New Zealand scheme, and it consented, reluctantly, to afford him help, and that but inadequate, against the pirates.

> "It is easy," wrote the Rajah at the close of the previous year, "for men to perform fine feats with the pen; it is easy for the rich man to give yearly thousands in charity; it is easy to preach against the slave trade, or to roar against piracy; it is easy to bustle about London, and get up associations for all kinds of objects – all this is easy, but it is not easy to stand alone – to be exiled – to lay out a small fortune – to expend life and health and money – to risk life itself, when the loss would be without glory and without gain… I am enabled to dispense happiness and peace to many thousand persons. I stand alone; I appeal for assistance and gain none; I have struggled for four years bearing my life in my hand. I hold a commanding position and influence over the natives; I feel it my paramount duty to gain protection and some power. I state it in so many plain words, and if, after all, I am left to my own resources the fault of failure is not with me. This negotiation with Government is nearly at an end, or if protracted, if I perceive any intention of delay, or any coolness, I will myself break it off and trust to God and my own wits… If they act cordially they will either give me a plain negative or some power to act, in order that I may carry out my views. If they haggle and bargain any further I will none of them, or if they bother me with their suspicions, or send any more gentlemen for the purpose of espionage, I will assert the independence I feel, and send them all to the devil."

This, it must be remembered, was in a private letter. His position was precarious. He, with less than half-a-dozen Englishmen, had established himself as reigning prince over Sarawak; its population consisted mainly of timid Land-Dayaks, useless in warfare, and there were only a few hundred Malays and Sea-Dayaks upon whom he could rely to protect the little State against its powerful and actively hostile neighbours. Even his own people were in a condition of tension and hesitation, not knowing whether the arm of England would be extended in his support, or be withdrawn, leaving him to succumb under the krises of assassins.

It is perhaps as well that the British Government did leave the Rajah so much alone; that he was able to exercise a free hand to carry out his own ideas, and that he was not crossed or hampered by the changing policies of the different Cabinets that came into power – some ready to extend the limits of the Empire, others shrinking from responsibilities, and seeking to contract the sphere of British influence within the narrowest limits, but all timid and nervous of opposition from the adverse party. The little State has thus had the advantage of having been governed for just seventy years directly by two of the ablest rulers of Orientals, having an intimate knowledge of their subjects and their requirements, and governing with their people, instead of having been subject to the capricious and often stupid government of the Colonial Office, and of ever-changing governors. Unfortunately the late Rajah was subsequently "crossed and hampered" from home, notably by the little England party at whose head stood Mr. Gladstone, and the greatest evil was done to Sarawak by his own countrymen supported by a timorous Government. Happily, the English rajahs, the second as well as the first, by their honesty of purpose and their inflexibility of resolution gathered about them a host of native adherents; these they inspired with self-respect, and confidence in their rulers, and thus formed a mass of public opinion that went far towards making their rule permanent, and enabled it to withstand checks from within and from without.

The Dutch at this time had been making praiseworthy efforts to check the Lanuns; they had destroyed several piratical fleets, and were preparing on a large scale to drive them off the seas; in this, however, they failed.

For some time the Rajah was free from his troublesome neighbours, and he devoted his time to the affairs of his little State, the population of which had just received an addition of 5000 families of Malays from the disturbed districts along the coast.

Not till Hasim and his train of obstructive and rapacious hangers-on had departed from Sarawak could the benefits of the Rajah's administration take complete effect. So long as these men remained, with their traditions of misrule, and their distorted ideas of the relation between the governor and the governed, a thousand difficulties were interposed, thwarting the Rajah's efforts, and these had to be circumvented or overcome. The pangirans, great and small, great in their self-confidence, proud of the mischief they had wrought, small and mean in their selfish aims, viewed the introduction of reform with ill-disguised hostility; and the Rajah Muda Hasim in their midst formed a nucleus about whom disaffection and intrigue must inevitably gather and grow to a head. Only Bedrudin was heart and soul with the Rajah, so far as his lights went. He was a man of intelligence and generous spirit, who had taken the lesson to heart that by good government, the encouragement of commerce and the peaceful arts, the country would thrive and the revenue in consequence largely increase, and that his brother pangirans were blindly and stupidly killing the goose that laid golden eggs. To him the Rajah was sincerely attached, and the attachment was reciprocated. Personally, the Rajah was sorry when Bedrudin had to return with his brothers to Bruni; but the Sultan's recall was imperative, and it obviated all risk of the prince being made, unwillingly, a gathering point of faction. It was advisable, moreover, that there should be near the Sultan's ear a man like Bedrudin, who would give wise counsel; and Hasim, weak and vacillating as he was, could show his nephew by his own experience that advantage would accrue to him by adopting a policy favourable to British enterprise, and by warning him that disaster, though approaching with lagging feet, must overtake him inevitably if he attempted to thwart it. Furthermore, the Sultan had been loud in his professions of affection for his dear absent uncles, and of his desire to have them about his person.

Early in October, H.M.S. Samarang, Captain Sir Edward Belcher, and the H.E.I.C.'s steamer Phlegethon, arrived to convey to Bruni, Rajah Muda Hasim, his brothers, and their numerous families, retainers, slaves, and hangers-on. The Rajah himself went up in the Samarang. On approaching Bruni there were signs of hostility from four forts on Pulo Cheremin, which Pangiran Usup had frightened the Sultan into building, but the flag of Hasim reassured the Brunis. The exiles were well received. The Sultan declared he would listen to no other adviser than Hasim, and the people were in favour of him. Though Pangiran Usup had gained great influence over the Sultan he deemed it prudent to dissemble, and declared himself ready implicitly to obey Hasim, and as a proof of good faith at once dismantled the new forts on Hasim ordering him to do so. The poorer classes, who had heard of the peace and security enjoyed by the inhabitants of Sarawak, openly expressed their desire that the Rajah should remain and govern conjointly with Pangiran Muda Hasim. Labuan island, which the Sultan now offered the Rajah, was examined, and the Rajah considered it superior to Kuching for a settlement, as being in a more central and more commanding position.[126]

In February, 1845, Captain Bethune of H.M.S. Driver, anchored in the Sarawak river, and brought a despatch from Lord Aberdeen appointing the Rajah confidential agent in Borneo to her Majesty, an appointment made mainly upon the Rajah's own suggestion that official recognition would go far to help him. He at once proceeded to Bruni in the Driver, bearing a letter from the Foreign Office to the Sultan in reply to his letters requesting assistance to suppress piracy; and Captain Bethune had been directed to select a suitable locality on the N.W. coast for the formation of a British settlement, whence the sea along the north and west coasts might be watched, and where there was coal suitable for a coaling station.

The letter was received by the Sultan and his pangirans with due honours, and the Rajah told them that he "was deputed by her Majesty the Queen to express her feelings of goodwill, and to offer every assistance in repressing piracy in these seas." The Sultan stared. Muda Hasim said, "We are greatly indebted; it is good, very good."[127] And the Sultan had reason to stare. Pangiran Usup, who was also present, was no doubt likewise too much taken aback to do anything else, ready as he was with his tongue, for such a proffer was as unexpected as it was unwelcome. Hitherto they had imagined, and with some reason, that owing to its slowness and inaction, the British Government was lukewarm in its intentions to suppress piracy; that outward professions would not be taken seriously, and were all that was needed of them to cover their secret encouragement of their piratical neighbours. The Sultan, however, was a clever dissembler; he joined with Hasim in expressing a hope that with the Rajah's assistance the government of Bruni might be settled, piracy suppressed, and trade fostered.

The Rajah then went to Singapore to meet the Admiral, Sir Thomas Cochrane, and to endeavour to interest him in Bornean affairs, to gain his assistance against the pirates, and in support of the party in Bruni that was in favour of reform. He was successful as the sequel will show, and in May returned to Bruni in the Phlegethon. He then discovered to his no little concern that the Princes Hasim and Bedrudin were in such danger that their brothers begged to be allowed to return to Sarawak. They were exposed to the intrigues of Pangiran Usup, who had not only poisoned the mind of the Sultan against his uncles of legitimate blood, but who was also bitterly hostile to English interference with piracy, which was the main source of his revenue. The imbecile Sultan, vicious at heart, and himself a participator in the spoils of piracy, was of too contracted a mind to be able to conceive the advantages that could be obtained were his capital converted from a nest of brigands and slaves into an emporium of commerce; and he was totally indifferent to the welfare of the greater portion of his subjects, who being pagans, were created by Allah to be preyed upon by the true believers.[128] He was accordingly induced to listen to Usup, of whom he was really frightened, and to mistrust Hasim and Bedrudin. To add to Hasim's troubles, the pirate chief of Marudu, Sherip Usman, had sent a defiant message threatening to attack him for favouring the English. If unsupported, the Rajah foresaw that Hasim would be dragged into a civil war which might end in his downfall. His life was in peril owing to his leaning towards the British Government, and the Rajah was determined to uphold him; if necessary, by bringing a force from Sarawak to carry Bruni. If too late to save him and Bedrudin, he resolved to burn Bruni from end to end, and take care it should remain afterwards in desolation.

The Rajah again proceeded to Singapore, and sufficiently interested the Admiral in Bruni affairs to induce him to call at that place with his squadron on his way to China. A fresh outrage by Sherip Usman in plundering and burning a brig decided the Admiral to take measures against him, and by his detention in slavery of two British subjects Pangiran Usup himself gave sufficient cause to call for punishment; these captives he had placed in confinement whenever a man-of-war appeared.

On August 9, Sir Thomas Cochrane had an interview with the Sultan, and the following morning called upon him for the restoration of the captives held by Usup, and for his punishment. The Sultan replied that Usup refused obedience to him, and that he was powerless to enforce it, and, as the offence was committed against the British, he requested the Admiral himself to take Usup in hand. Though the Admiral had brought a line-of-battle ship, two frigates, two brigs, and three steamers, Usup, "strong in the idea of his strength," was foolhardy enough to defy him, and prepare for resistance. A shot was fired over his house from the Vixen, which was replied to by the guns of his fortified house, thereupon the steamer poured in a broadside and knocked the house to shivers. Usup fled with the few retainers he had with him – he had taken the precaution to send away his women and treasure the day before. We will return to him shortly.

The fleet then sailed to call Sherip Usman to account. His stronghold in Marudu Bay was attacked by a force of 550 men in twenty-four boats, and after a stout resistance was taken with a loss of some twenty killed and wounded. Amongst the former was Lieutenant Gibbard, and near him, when he fell, was the present Rajah, then a midshipman on the Wolverine. The pirates suffered heavily. Many sherips and chiefs were killed, and Sherip Usman was himself mortally wounded – he was carried away to die in the jungle. As in the Batang Lupar the year previously, several proofs of piracies committed upon European vessels here came to light in the shape of articles taken from ships; and such articles would probably have been more numerous had there not been a market in Singapore for the more valuable commodities.

The Rajah now returned to Sarawak in the Cruiser, visiting Bruni on his way. Here he learnt that two days after he had left the town, Pangiran Usup, full of rage and resentment, had gathered a force to attack Bruni and take and kill Pangiran Muda Hasim, and his brother Pangiran Bedrudin, but the latter met him, inflicted on him a signal defeat, and Usup was constrained to fly to Kimanis, some seventy-five miles to the north-east of the capital, over which district he was feudary lord. Then the two uncles insisted upon their nephew the Sultan issuing a decree for his execution. This was done, and the order transmitted to the headman at Kimanis. It was carried out by him with characteristic perfidy. Pretending to entertain a lively friendship for the refugee, he seized an opportunity, when Usup had laid aside his weapons in order to bathe, to fall upon him and strangle him. His brother, Pangiran Yakub, was executed at the same time.

1

Sultan is a title foreign to the Court language of Bruni. – Sir Hugh Low, G.C.M.G., Sarawak, 1848.

2

Rajah, correctly Raja. Plural is expressed by duplication.

3

In Bruni this title also is now debased by being granted to all natives, Chinese included.

4

St. John gives the di Gadong as Minister of Revenues, and the Pemancha as Minister for Home Affairs. —Forests of the Far East.

5

Pronounced by Malays Sherip, or Serip. Fem. Sheripa, Seripa. Sayid is another, though in the East less common title, assumed by descendants of the Prophet. Sir Richard Burton in his Pilgrimage says the former, men of the sword, the ruling and executive branch, are the descendants of El Husayn, the Prophet's grandson; and the latter, men of the pen, religion, and politics, are descended from the Prophet's eldest grandson, El Hasan. Siti is the female title.

6

A corruption of Tuan-ku (Tuan aku), my Lord, as it is often so pronounced.

7

The name Borneo is a corruption of Burni, itself a corruption of Beruni or Bruni, the capital of that ancient but now decayed Sultanate bearing the same name, and of which Sarawak, and a great part of British North Borneo, once formed parts. It was the first place in Borneo with which the Spanish and Portuguese had any dealings, and in their old chronicles it is referred to as Burni, and Borneo subsequently became the distinguishing name of the whole island to Europeans. The natives themselves have none, except perhaps the doubtful one of Pulau Ka-lamanta-an, the island of raw sago, so named in recent times by the merchants and traders of the Straits Settlements as being the island from which that commodity was brought, and in those settlements it has since become the native name for Borneo. But in Sarawak this name is known to the Malays alone, and in other parts of Borneo, perhaps only a few have heard of it. In fact, it is applicable to Sarawak only, for in former days sago was exported to the Straits solely from that country, and the trade was carried on by Sarawak Malays, first with Penang and subsequently with Singapore. An old English map of about 1700 gives to the town of Bruni, as well as to the whole island, the name of Borneo. Mercator (1595) also gives Borneo to both.

Bruni is variously spelt Brunai, Brunei, Bruné, Borneo, Borney, Bornei, Porne, and Burni by old writers; all corruptions of Bruni. The Sanskrit word Bhurni, meaning land or country, has been suggested as the origin of the name.

8

See page [34].

9

Everett (A. Hart). "Notes on the Distribution of the Useful Minerals in Sarawak," in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1878. Mr. Everett was a distinguished naturalist. He served for eight years in the Sarawak service, and died in 1898.

10

Odoardo Beccari, Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo, 1904.

11

Probably the first European to discover these strange insects was the Italian Pigafetta, who in 1521 noticed them in the island of Palawan, to the north of Borneo, and thus quaintly describes them: "In this island are found certain trees, the leaves of which, when they fall off, are animated, and walk." He surmised they lived upon air. —Magellan, Hakluyt Society.

12

St. John mentions one that was killed at Brooketon 26 feet 2 inches in length. —Life in the Forests of the Far East, 1863.

13

With regard to the collection of orchids it has also been found necessary to do this. Collectors would ruthlessly destroy all orchids, especially the rarer kinds, which they could not carry away, in order to prevent others from collecting these.

14

In about 1825 a large bone was found in a cave at Bau which was pronounced to be that of an elephant. These animals are common in parts of N. Borneo, and Pigafetta found them at Bruni in 1521.

15

The Ptilocercus Lowii, only found in Borneo. It has been awarded a genus all to itself, and is one of the rarest of Bornean curiosities. – J. Hewitt, Sarawak Gazette, September 1, 1908.

16

"According to Mr. Boulanger, Borneo can boast of producing the longest legged frog and the longest legged toad in the world." —Idem.

17

"Mr. St. John (Forests of the Far East, p. 190) mentions stones or pebbles of a dark colour considered by the natives as sacred. Some such, found at Quop, were said to have been lost during the civil wars. They are possibly paleolithic implements." – Beccari, op. cit. p. 367.

18

The late Rajah wrote in 1838: "We know scarcely anything of these varieties of the human race beyond the bare fact of their existence." We have since learnt something of their languages and customs; of their origin nothing.

19

Mr. F. D. de Rozario. The Sarawak Gazette, September 2, 1901. Mr. de Rozario, the officer in charge of Kapit Fort, has been in the Government service for some fifty years, of which nearly all have been spent in the Upper Rejang, and his knowledge of the natives, their customs and languages, is unique.

20

See note 2, page [18].

21

The Indra Lila (brother of the Lila Pelawan, who was the present Rajah's Malay chief at Lingga over fifty years ago), was their chief. Trouble arose owing to Akam Nipa, the celebrated Kayan chief, who will be noticed hereafter, having fallen in love with a Malay girl of rank. His suit being rejected, he threatened to forcibly abduct the lady, a threat which he could have carried out with ease, so the Malays fled with her to Lingga. This occurred some eighty years ago.

22

One of Magellan's chroniclers records that in 1521 men were found in Gilo (Gilolo or Jilolo, to the east of, and near to the Celebes), "with ears so long and pendulous that they reached to their shoulders." —Magellan, Hakluyt Society. Marsden, History of Sumatra, says that the people of Neas island off the west coast of Sumatra elongate their ears in the same manner; so do the Sagais of Belungan. The sculptures above mentioned, and the fact that this curious custom still exists in southern India, point to it being one of Hindu origin.

23

Human sacrifices are still in vogue amongst the Kayans and Kenyahs in the Batang Kayan and Mahkam rivers.

24

The Kajamans, Sekapans, Sians, and Lanans are said to have been the first to cross over from the Bantang Kayan (Belungan) into the Balui (Rejang). They were probably then one tribe.

25

Muka is the Malay for face. The word has been carried into the English language as mug, contemptuously "an ugly mug," from the Sanskrit word muhka, the face.

26

Mr. E. A. W. Cox, formerly Resident of the Trusan, and latterly of the Bintulu, says the Kadayan tradition is that many generations back they were brought from Deli in Sumatra by a former Sultan of Bruni. They have always been the immediate followers of the sultans, forming their main bodyguard. They have no distinctive language of their own, and talk a low Bruni patois; their dress is peculiar; and their system of rice cultivation is far in advance of all other Borneans.

27

The Hindu sacred bull.

28

Writing of the Rafflesia, "those extraordinary parasitical plants, whose huge and startling conspicuous flowers spring from the ground like gigantic mushrooms," Beccari (op. cit. p. 102) says, "The Land-Dayaks called the variety he found at Poi (and which he named R. Tuan-Mudæ, in honour of the present Rajah) 'Bua pakma'; evidently a corruption of 'patma' or 'padma,' the sacred lotus (Nelumbian speciosum) of the Hindus, which is not a native of Borneo. This is, no doubt, one of the many traces of the ancient faith once professed by the Dayaks, who have preserved the memory of the emblematical flower, transferring its name to that of another plant conspicuous for its size and singular appearance. In Java, as well as in Sumatra, the Rafflesia is known as 'Patma'; but there the fact is not surprising, for the prevalence of Hinduism in those islands is a matter of not very remote history." Pakma or patma is the Malay name for the lotus.

The late Sir Hugh Low notes that the Land-Dayaks, who (in common with most of the inland tribes) regulate their farming seasons by the motions of the Pleiades, call that constellation Sakara, probably from the Batara Sakra of the Hindu-Javan mythology, to whose particular care the earth was confided. —Sarawak.

Hindu gold ornaments and a Persian coin, bearing a date corresponding with the year 960 A.D., have been discovered up the Sarawak river, and some in the centre of the Land-Dayak country, which shows that the people of the ancient Hindu-Javan settlement at Santubong must have spread into the interior, and have mixed with the natives.

29

Afterwards Admiral of the Fleet.

30

Disappointment in marriage and unkindness or harshness on the part of relatives are common causes of suicide by man or woman, but the most common motive is shame, particularly in cases of an unmarried woman, when enceinte, being unable to prove to the tribe who the father of her child is. A whole family has been known to poison themselves to escape the consequences and disgrace which would have befallen them owing to one of them having been the accidental cause of a long communal house being destroyed by fire. Suicide is invariably committed by eating the poisonous root of the tuba plant, derris elliptica.

31

The worst on record in Sarawak was committed in 1894 by a half-bred Chinaman (his mother was a Segalang, and he was brought up as one) at Seduan village, three miles from Sibu, in the Rejang. This man, who had just been discharged from jail, arose in the middle of the night, and speared or cut down all the inmates of the house – thirteen women and children, of whom only two or three survived. He was shot by Mr. Q. A. Buck, then the Resident at Sibu (joined 1874, retired 1899), who was quickly on the spot, and was the means of preventing a further loss of life.

32

The Sea-Dayaks say that they were constructed by the gods when they made the sky, out of a small surplus of the blue.

33

St. John, op. cit., mentions that the late Sultan Mumin of Bruni had an ancient jar which was reputed to be able to speak, and that it moaned sorrowfully the night before his first wife died. He refused £2000 for it.

34

Naga, a dragon; benaga, having a dragon.

35

Meaning a deer in Malay and Sea-Dayak.

36

A misprint for "Tunggang."

37

Late Resident-General of the Federated Malay States.

38

This was written in 1866.

39

Amongst Eastern people any attempt to make a systematic census is liable to be misapprehended, and to give rise to a bad feeling, and even to dangerous scares, and for that reason no census has been made by the Government. This census was an approximation based upon the amount paid in direct taxation, such as head and door taxes, allowing an average of so many people to a family.

40

And so Orang-Murut means a hill-man, murut, or more correctly murud, meaning a hill —bulud in Sulu.

41

Mr. J. Hewitt, B.A., Curator of the Sarawak Museum in the Sarawak Gazette, February 2, 1906.

42

Kuching Observatory.

43

The Sarawak Gazette.

44

Named by the Spaniards Mount St. Paul according to Pigafetta. J. Hunt gives St. Peter's Mount in his Sketch of Borneo, 1812, and a map by Mercator published in about 1595 gives St. Pedro, and old maps of subsequent dates also give the latter name.

45

But Mr. C. Vernon-Collins, of the Sarawak Civil Service, recently found a bead which has been pronounced at the British Museum to have been made in Venice prior to A.D. 1100. A similar one of the same date was presented by H.H. the Ranee to the British Museum some years ago. It is a bead highly esteemed by the Kayans.

46

"Book of the Descent," Sir Hugh Low. —Journal of the Straits Branch of the R.A.S., No. 5.

47

Jewata is the Land-Dayak name of a god from the Sanskrit word dewata, divinity, deity, gods. The Sea-Dyaks also have Jewata in their mythology, likewise Batara, from the Sanskrit bhatar, holy; neither means God, as some writers appear to think. The Dayaks have no idea of theism.

48

The late Rajah has recorded a tradition of several of the Land-Dayak tribes that in the old times they were under the government of Java, and their tribute was regularly sent there.

49

The title assumed by the rulers of Majapahit, from "Bhatara," noted above.

50

According to Crawfurd. Sir Stamford Raffles gives 1475.

51

Formerly a monarchy whose jurisdiction comprehended all Sumatra, and whose sovereign was talked of with respect in the farthest parts of the East. – Marsden's History of Sumatra.

52

Lima is a small town on the north coast of Portugal.

53

Sir Hugh Low, Book of the Descent, op. cit.

54

See note 2, p. [45].

55

A Collection of Voyages, 1729, Dampier.

56

Idem.

57

Forrest's Voyage to New Guinea, 1779.

58

Sarawak, Hugh Low, 1848.

59

Hunt, op. cit.

60

Dias, in 1487.

61

"Antiquity of Chinese Trade," J. R. Logan in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago, 1848.

62

Forrest, op. cit.

63

Logan, op. cit.

64

Mercator's map gives Melano, which confirms this supposition. Other places on the Sarawak coast mentioned in this map are Tamaio-baio, Barulo (Bintulu), Puchavarao (Muka), Tamenacrim, and Tamaratos. The first and two last cannot be identified. Tama is of course for tanah, land, and the last name simply means in Malay, the land of hundreds – of many people, which the first name may also imply. Varao being man in Spanish and Portuguese, Puchavarao means the place of the Pucha (Muka) people – Pucha also being a transcriber's error for Puka. It was near this place that the Portuguese captain, who afterwards became a Bruni pangiran (p. [42]) was wrecked, and also near this place on Cape Sirik, a point which is continually advancing seaward, that some forty to fifty years ago the remains of a wreck were discovered a considerable distance from the sea, and so must have belonged to a ship wrecked many years before. When Rentap's stronghold in the Saribas was captured by the present Rajah in 1861, an old iron cannon dated 1515 was found there. Traditions exist pointing to wrecks and to the existence of hidden treasure at two or three places along the coast.

65

Meaning queen-consort.

66

Probably the Kalaka; the Malays in the Rejang came from that river.

67

A Voyage to and from the Island of Borneo, 1718.

68

The Dutch confiscated all foreign ships they could seize found trading in the Archipelago without permission from them to do so.

69

Borneo and Sumatra were then the great pepper producing countries.

70

Forrest, op. cit., confirms this, and adds "the Dutch forbid the natives to manufacture cloth."

71

Sir Hugh Low, op. cit.

72

Son of the late Sir Hugh Low, G.C.M.G. He served in the Sarawak Civil Service from 1869 to 1887, in which year he died. His knowledge of the natives, their languages, and customs, was unsurpassed. The notes he left formed the basis of Ling Roth's work, The Natives of Borneo, 1896.

73

This was the serah, or forced trade formerly in force in all Malayan countries; and it appears to be still so, in a modified form, in Sumatra.

74

The Sarawak Malays were also so forced to mine by Pangiran Makota, and this forced labour was one of the principal causes of the rebellion of 1836-40 against the Sultan's Government.

75

This happened after this man had been banished by the late Rajah from Sarawak. See Chap. III. p. [87], for the fate he met and so richly merited.

76

Famous in Malay legends throughout the East as Nakoda Ragam, a renowned sea rover and conqueror.

77

W. P. Groeneveldt, Essays relating to Indo-China, 1887.

78

Camoen's Lusiad (Sir Richard Burton's translation.) Camoen here refers to the islands of the Malayan Archipelago, which he visited in his exile some 350 years ago.

79

St. John tells us that a few years before this an English ship that had put into the Sarawak river to water was treacherously seized; the Englishmen were murdered, and the Lascars sold into slavery.

80

Anglice, cat.

81

A short time before the commencement of this history this place had been attacked by the Saribas Dayaks, and 120 people were slain.

82

3000 feet.

83

Spencer St. John, Sir James Brooke, 1879.

84

Mr. Brooke. He was a good-looking man. Capt. the Hon. H. Keppel gives his portrait, the frontispiece to vol. i. of his Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido, which is incorrectly entitled the portrait of Rajah Muda Hasim.

85

Spelt Sahib by Mr. Brooke in his letters and journals, and by others, but correctly his name was Sahap. He had a reputation for bravery, and was styled by the Sekrang Dayaks "Bujang Brani," the brave man.

86

There is no strict law of primogeniture in Bruni, otherwise Rajah Muda Hasim could not have been heir-presumptive. As he was of royal blood, and the prince most fitted to succeed, he was looked upon as the heir to the throne, and was so acknowledged (publicly in 1846) by the Sultan, and was therefore more correctly heir-apparent. At this time Sultan Omar Ali had two sons, and the eldest, also named Hasim, must have been about thirty-five years of age. There was a disgraceful harem scandal in connection with their birth, which pointed to their having been the sons of a Nakoda, or merchant. Though this appears to have been generally credited, Hasim nevertheless became the 24th Sultan in 1885.

It may be noted here that Omar Ali himself was only de facto Sultan, as he was never able to obtain the legal investiture which in Bruni constitutes an election to the throne de jure, and which confers upon the sovereign the title of Iang de Pertuan, the Lord who rules, the most exalted title, and one which he never assumed.

87

Or an abbreviation of Muhammad Husain. In former works he is incorrectly styled Moksain (for Matsain), following Mr. Brooke's published letters and journals, which were badly edited in regard to native names and words.

88

Mr. Brooke.

89

Mr. Brooke.

90

The Bruni, not the Sarawak Malays.

91

Mr. Brooke.

92

Idem.

93

By which he was generally referred to, both in documents and verbally, by the Malays of Bruni and Sarawak. "Rajah of Sarawak" was a complimentary title given to him by Europeans only. He has been frequently styled Muda Hasim by former writers; this would be unintelligible to a Malay.

94

Such was this ascendency that they became the founders of the present ruling dynasties of Bruni (Chap. II., p. [1]), Palembang (Sumatra), Pontianak, Sambas, Mindanau, and Sulu, and probably of other native states.

95

Land-Dayaks.

96

Shortly before Rajah Brooke's arrival, Sherip Sahap with a large force of Sekrang Dayaks had attacked the Sau tribe of Land-Dayaks in Upper Sarawak. Many were killed, their villages plundered and burnt, and nearly all the surviving women and children, to the number of some two hundred and fifty, carried off into slavery. The Rajah eventually recovered nearly all.

97

Meaning Rajah Muda Hasim.

98

Bruni.

99

Duit, Malay for a cent.

100

Rajah Brooke.

101

"I admit that Bruni has its points, but what irony to compare for a moment the city of marble palaces with the mass of miserable huts which a single match could easily reduce to ashes." – Beccari, op. cit. The Rajah called the place a "Venice of hovels." Mercator in his Atlas describes it as "being situated on a saltwater lagoon like Venice," hence probably it became known as the Venice of Borneo.

102

Kota batu, stone fort. The name still remains. It was built towards the close of the fifteenth century by Sherip Ali, the first Arab Sultan, with the aid of the Chinese subjects his wife's mother had brought to Bruni. The city was then nearer the mouth of the river. It was moved to its present position by Sultan Muadin about 200 years ago.

103

Magellan, Hakluyt Society, and the Portuguese Jorge de Menezes, who visited Bruni five years after Pigafetta, notices that the city was surrounded with a wall of brick, and possessed some noble edifices. Other early voyagers describe the sultans and rulers of Malayan States as maintaining great style, and their equipments, – such as swords of state, saddles, chairs, eating and drinking utensils – as being of pure gold. Allowing for some exaggeration, this would still point to a former condition of prosperity which enabled rulers and nobles to keep up a pageantry which has long since vanished.

104

This malformation, according to the laws of Bruni, would have disqualified him for the throne, for these provide that no person in any way imbecile in mind or deformed in person can enjoy the regal dignity, whatever title to it his birth might have given him. – Sir Hugh Low, op. cit. p. 108.

105

Saya, or more correctly, sahaya (mis-spelt suya in the Rajah's badly edited journals) is the Malay for I, mine; so amigo saya would be, My friend. Amigo was one of the few Spanish words the Sultan had.

106

Established in 1855.

107

Afterwards Admiral of the Fleet. He died, January 1904.

108

The Governor-General of Netherlands East Indies in a rescript, dated January 23, 1846, acknowledged that the exertions during the past twenty-five years effectually to suppress piracy on the coasts of Borneo had not been successful for want of combination, and for having been limited to the western coast.

109

A Collection of Voyages, 1729.

110

Sulu was the principal market for the disposal of captives and plunder.

111

A son of Captain Francis Light, who founded Penang in 1786, was named Lanoon, he having been born on the island at the time it was being blockaded by Lanun pirates.

112

Dayak war-boats, some having as many as 75 to the crew.

113

Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido, 1847.

114

On behalf of the Sultan, Saribas and Sekrang being beyond Rajah Brooke's jurisdiction.

115

Keppel, op. cit.

116

These Sea-Dayaks, together with those of the Undup, also an affluent of the Batang Lupar, subsequently became the mainstay of the Government against the Saribas and Sekrangs.

117

Life of Sir James Brooke, p. 84.

118

Sir Edward's report upon Sarawak appears to have been favourable; he pronounced the coal at Bruni, which he never examined, to be unworkable, and the Sultan to be a savage.

119

Pronounced by the natives Achi.

120

More correctly Putusan, or Pemutus. We retain the old spelling.

121

These guns realised £900 at public auction in Singapore.

122

The Patinggi was always ready and ever to the fore where tough work and hard knocks were going, and he was the guiding and leading spirit in such expeditions as was this. "Three fingered Jack" the Dido's crew had dubbed him, having that strong regard for him that brave men bear towards another though his skin be of a different complexion – for he had lost two fingers in a former encounter. The type has since changed, and the courtly, intrepid, and determined fighting Malay chief has gone – and he is missed. "I sigh for some of the old hands that could not read or write, but could work, and had more sound wisdom in their little fingers than many popinjay gentlemen of the present day carry in their heads," so wrote the present Rajah ten years ago.

123

Mr. George Steward, formerly of the H.E.I.C.'s maritime service, had been sent out by the Rajah's agent, Mr. Wise, on a trading venture. He joined the expedition as a volunteer, and had concealed himself in Patinggi Ali's boat, where he should not have been.

124

Keppel, op. cit. We have taken our account of the expedition up the Batang Lupar mainly from Keppel's narrative, the only original history of these operations hitherto published.

125

He was afterwards pardoned and permitted to reside at Sekrang town, where he died.

126

Labuan, however, proved a failure as a trading centre, and in that respect has taken a very secondary position to Kuching.

127

Journals, Keppel, op. cit.

128

The pirates and their supporters, however, preyed upon Islams as well as infidels, and religion was a dead letter to them in this respect. Quite contrary to the tenets of their faith, true believers who were captured were sold into slavery.