The Project Gutenberg eBook of A History of Sarawak under Its Two White Rajahs 1839-1908, by S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould and C. A. Bampfylde

The Commission had done no serious harm with his own loyal people. They heard with bewilderment that the man on whom their prosperity, and indeed their security, depended, had been maligned in England, and was to be tried as a malefactor in Singapore, and their dread was lest he should be taken from their head, or should throw up his task in disgust, and the country be allowed to relapse into oppression and anarchy; for so surely as the Rajah left, would the pangirans return and resume their blood-sucking operations on one side, and on the other the pirates recover from their humiliation and recommence their depredations, and so they would perish between the upper and nether millstone.

The Ministry made no attempt to remove the harmful impressions caused by the false step they had so weakly been induced to take; they but confirmed these by making no amende, and by withdrawing all support, and as the sequel will show, the Commission paved the way for the rebellion of the Chinese, and for the outbreak of disaffected Malays and other natives, aided and incited by intriguing Brunis, which were to follow, and which cost the lives of many Europeans, and great numbers of Chinese and natives, and nearly resulted in the extinction of the raj. With justice the Rajah wrote: "It is a sad thing to say, but true as sad, that England has been the worst opponent of the progress of Sarawak, and is now the worst enemy of her liberty."

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.

129. The son of Sherip Japar. S. Japar died the following year.

130. He was married to a niece of Datu Patinggi Gapur.

131. His son Haji Usup joined the Government service in 1862, and was afterwards appointed Datu Bandar in the Rejang. He died April 1st, 1905, after having served the Government faithfully and with distinction for over forty years. As a magistrate he bore a high reputation.

132. The ring Bedrudin sent had been given him before he left Sarawak by the Rajah, who told Bedrudin to send it to him when he had need of him; it was seized by the Sultan before Japar escaped from Bruni.

133. He meant Bruni, which he had hoped to have restored to its former state of prosperity.

134. Reports had been published that the Rajah was closely besieged in Kuching by the Sultan's forces.

135. The foregoing details are mainly taken from Mundy's Rajah Brooke's Journals. The captured cannon were sent to England. St. John says some were melted up to construct cannon for the Crimea.—Forests of the Far East Brunis were famous brass-founders, and many of these guns must have been very old.

136. Private Letters of the Rajah.

137. His son, the Pangiran Muda, is still alive in Bruni.

138. The tribute was cancelled by the release of a debt due to the Rajah by the Sultan, the interest upon which was equivalent to the yearly tribute.

139. Though this deed bore the seal of Pangiran Abdul Mumin, he confirmed it by another granted in 1853, after he had become Sultan. Only copies, attested by H.M.'s Consul-General, exist now, the originals, together with the two previous grants, having been burnt during the Chinese rebellion of 1857.

140. Letter to the Earl of Clarendon, September 27, 1853.

141. Captain Mundy said truly of the Rajah that he was the de facto sovereign of the whole coast of Borneo from point Api (he should have said Cape Datu) to Marudu, 700 miles in extent.

142. The territory of Sarawak then extended to Cape Kedurong.

143. Mundy, op. cit.

144. From Blue Book, March 2, 1854.

145. Private Letters.

146. Letter from the Rajah to the Tuan Muda, 1864.

147. From Mundy, op. cit.

148. Of these, three foundered from injuries received during the engagement, so that few returned home to tell the tale. It took the Balenini about fifteen years to forget the lesson.—Sir James Brooke, St. John.

149. Mundy, op. cit.

150. Private Letters.

151. He joined the Rajah in March, 1843, having previously served in the H.E.I. Co.'s Navy, and became Police Magistrate and Government Secretary. In 1863 he was appointed Resident of Sarawak. He frequently administered the Government during the absences of the late and the present Rajah. He retired in 1873, and died in 1891.

152. The warrant of investiture was issued by her Majesty on May 22, 1848.

153. Amongst others who came out with the Rajah in the Mæander were Mr. Spenser St. John, afterwards Sir Spenser St. John, G.C.M.G., the Rajah's Secretary; and Mr. Hugh Low, afterwards Sir Hugh Low, G.C.M.G., Colonial Secretary at Labuan. Mr. St. John was Consul-General at Bruni from 1853-1861; he left Borneo the latter year upon promotion. Mr. Low had before spent some three years in Sarawak botanising. He left Labuan in 1877, when he was appointed Resident of Perak.

154. The eldest son of the Rev. Francis Charles Johnson, Vicar of White Lackington, Somersetshire, by Emma, the Rajah's second sister.

155. Yellow ground, with black and red cross, as shown in illustration—the arms of the Brookes. The Government flag is distinguished by a crown in the centre; the Rajah's flag is a burgee, or swallow-tailed flag.

156. Keppel, Voyage to the Indian Archipelago.

157. Private Letters.

158. Of his fifteen sons, Abangs Apong, Chek, Tek, and Bunsu all served the Government afterwards; they were distinguished more for bravery than for rectitude, but they were faithful and useful servants. Another son was killed during the operations up the Saribas subsequent to the action of Beting Maru. The Laksamana lived for years after these events, and was about ninety when he died.

159. Keppel, op. cit.

160. The plains on both banks of the river evidence a former cultivation on an extensive scale.

161. St. John, Life of Sir James Brooke.

162. An army in Malay and Dayak.

163. Afterwards Admiral Sir Arthur Farquhar, K. C. B. He died in 1908, aged ninety-three.

164. Anglice, King Lion.

165. Beting Maru is the name of a long sand-spit running into the sea between the Kalaka and Saribas rivers off the Maru river.

166. This same Linggir in 1845 attempted to murder the Rajah and his officers and other English guests whilst at dinner in the Rajah's house at Kuching. He marched into the dining-room with eighty armed men, pretending to pay a friendly visit. The Rajah and his guests adopted the only policy open to them, and pretended as well to be friendly, for they were completely at the mercy of the Dayaks. They entertained their unwelcome guests with wine and cigars whilst waiting for the Datus, to whom the Rajah had contrived covertly to send a message. The Datu Temanggong arrived first with thirty men, and then came the Datu Bandar with fifty men. The Datus wished to kill Linggir for his intended treachery, the Rajah, however, spared him, perhaps unwisely, but he had to slink away to his boat with a flea in his ear. He had actually brought with him a basket to contain the Rajah's head. He afterwards became a peaceable citizen, and very friendly to the white men.

167. These unfortunate girls, and those taken at Matu, were barbarously murdered by the pirates to prevent their being rescued.

168. Or better, Mashhor, an Arabic word meaning illustrious.

169. Mr. W. Brereton first came to Sarawak in the Samarang, as a midshipman, in 1843. In 1848 he left the Navy and joined the Rajah. He was first stationed at Labuan. He was only twenty years of age when appointed to take charge of Sekrang.

170. The Sekrangs lost heavily at the battle of Beting Maru.

171. Private Letters.

172. Private Letters.

173. To show how these charges were supported by wilful and gross exaggerations, that could only have been made for the express purpose of deceiving the public, and which were as ridiculous as they were mischievous, Hume stated that it was doubtful whether a portion of the Royal Navy of China, which was reported to be off the coast at the time for the purpose of making peace with these people (the Saribas and Sekrangs), had not been destroyed by the expedition!

174. Keppel, Voyage to the Indian Archipelago.

175. The important fact that in all their marauding expeditions the Saribas and Sekrang Dayaks were mixed up with the Malays of the Saribas and Batang Lupar, who not only commanded and led them, but accompanied them in large numbers seems to have been quite overlooked by both the Rajah's accusers and his supporters. This in itself is a sufficient indication of the piratical nature of these expeditions. The character of these Malays as pirates was at least beyond question, and to assert that they went with these poor "harmless and timid" Dayaks to assist them in their intertribal feuds would be a very wide stretch of imagination. We have shown that the force routed on Beting Maru was led by Malays.

176. Married to a daughter of the Datu Patinggi Gapur. He was afterwards selected by Sherip Masahor's party to murder the present Rajah, but the task was not to his liking.

177. From Life of Sir James Brooke, St. John.

178. May 1850, 145 to 20; June 1850, 169 to 29; July 1851, 230 to 19.

179. The Rajah to Lord Clarendon, December 25, 1853.

180. John C. Templar, Private Letters of the Rajah, v. iii. p. 117.

181. Private Letters.

182. The Dutch Resident of Western Borneo, not of Sambas only. He certified that on one raid the Saribas and Sekrangs killed four hundred people on the Dutch coast. Referred to by Earl in his Eastern Seas; he relates that the Dayaks swept the whole coast from Sekrang to Sambas, killing the entire population of Selakau. As far back as 1825, the Resident of Sambas (Van Grave) and his secretary were killed on their way to Pontianak in a small vessel. Keppel tells us the Saribas once laid in wait for "the (Dutch) man-of-war schooner Haai, and in one engagement killed thirty-seven of the Dutch, losing eighty of their own force." Keppel's book, A Voyage to the Eastern Archipelago in 1850, contains an able refutation of the charges made by Hume and Cobden.