LABUAN.
Wednesday, April 6th.—At daybreak it was so hazy that our position could not be ascertained. Between 10 and 11 a.m. sights were worked out, and it was found that a current had set us thirty miles to E.N.E. At noon we had run 230 miles under steam, and, putting the yacht's head round, we steered direct for the northern entrance to Victoria Harbour, off Labuan Island, where we dropped anchor at 2 p.m.
Not long afterwards Lieutenant Hamilton, R.N. (Harbour-master, Postmaster, Captain of the Port, Treasurer, and I believe the holder of half a dozen other offices under the British Government), and Mr. Everett called. They told us all the news, and recommended our going alongside the wharf to coal and water at this, the last British port before our long voyage to Australia. It is quite the funniest, most out-of-the-world place we have ever been in, just as Sarawak is the most wonderful little independent state—well managed, complete in itself, with its small army, still smaller navy, and miniature government. Labuan has not possessed a Governor since Sir Charles Lees (then Mr. Lees) left, but it boasts capital public offices, a first-rate Government House, Secretary's residence, church, parsonage, and other amenities of advanced civilisation. Only there is nobody to govern, and hardly anything for the officials to do. At present the colony of Labuan seems a farce, and ought either to be done away with or placed on an entirely different footing. The best plan would probably be to make it an adjunct to the Straits Settlements, at the same time establishing a protectorate over Sarawak and Brunei.
Dr. and Mrs. Leys came on board in the afternoon, and later on we landed with them at the very rotten and rickety wooden pier, and reached a grass sward, by the side of which stand the public offices and a few shops. Some of the party walked, while others drove in various little pony-carriages. Baby and I went with Dr. Leys to see a party of Sarawak Dyaks who had just come in from the Barram River with wedges of gutta-percha, which they were offering for sale, as well as some weapons and clothing just captured. We bought a good many interesting things, such as jackets made of cotton, grown, dyed, and woven by the Dyaks, horn and tortoiseshell combs, kreises, parongs, knives, pipes, tobacco-pouches, travelling-bags of plaited matting, and sumpitans or blowpipes from which poisoned arrows are discharged. They prize these latter very highly, and are generally loth to part with them, so that we may consider ourselves fortunate in having come across these few members of a tribe just returned from a warlike expedition judiciously combined with the more peaceful and profitable trade of gathering gutta-percha and india-rubber. We also met a group of bird's-nest collectors, from whom we bought some nests of both the black and white varieties, scientifically known as Callocalia. Then we purchased two small rhinoceros-horns, greatly prized here for their supposed medicinal virtues, and considered to be worth their weight in gold. We succeeded likewise in getting some pairs of splendid pearl-shells, with fine golden lips and incipient pearls adhering to them; but I am obliged to admit that they were frightfully expensive.
After visiting all the shops in the town—few in number, and nearly all kept by Chinamen—we went for a drive into the country. It was just like driving through one vast park, along soft springy green roads leading through fragrant jungle. There were no fences, and fruit-trees of every kind abounded, heavily laden with oranges, pomaloes, mangoes, mangosteens, durians, and other delicacies—all, unfortunately for us, at present unripe.
The incongruity of some of the things which were pointed out to us during our drive was very amusing. There, for instance, stood a large jail, in the happy condition of being tenantless. So long, indeed, had it been empty that the gates stood permanently open, and the jailers had all departed for other lands, with the exception of the chief official, who remained in the colony, indeed, but who had long since turned his attention to other avocations. The system of plurality appears to prevail in Labuan, and it is said that amusing situations have more than once arisen in consequence of the multiplicity of offices centred in one individual. The postmaster, for instance, has been known to write to the treasurer for payment for the delivery of mails, the harbour-master to the same official for the value of coals consumed, the captain of the port for the homeward passage-money of some shipwrecked sailors—all three letters and the replies thereto being in the same handwriting. I rather think, by the way, that the Labuan treasury was at a low ebb when we were there; for I know that the question arose whether it contained enough money to meet some fifty or sixty dollar notes of ours which we had given in exchange for our purchases.
The pension-list is very large in the island of Labuan. There is a church, but no acting clergyman, though there are three on the pension-list, and the bishop only comes twice a year, or sometimes twice in two years, according to the requirements of the remainder of his large diocese, which comprises North Borneo, Sarawak, and Singapore, besides Labuan. He is expected to arrive to-morrow from Sandakan, but I fear we shall just miss him.
Malay Village, Labuan