Just afterwards a ship came here and anchored in the river. It was very hot, and at night the ports were left open to secure ample ventilation. In the morning a gold watch and a revolver were missing. The thieves had dropped down the river silently in a boat and taken advantage of the darkness to put their hands in at the ports and take all they could reach. A complaint was made to the Sultan at once. In a few days the goods were recovered, and word was also brought to the effect that each of the offenders had lost one of their hands for the offence. Of course nothing so severe as this was anticipated when the charge was made, and no one more regretted the cruelty than those who were so near being losers by the dishonesty of the maimed sufferers. The principal export product is sago, of which large quantities are brought down from the Limbang and other rivers in the interior. There are two large sago-washing establishments in the town, both the property of intelligent and hospitable Chinamen. Gutta-percha, caoutchouc, edible birds’-nests, camphor, rattans, and fine timber are also obtained in small quantities from the forests of the country behind. Fine fish is obtained from the river by the natives, and fruit is very plentiful in season. Excellent drinking-water is obtained from some rocks beside the river between the town and the old Consulate. It is pure, cool, fresh, and abundant, inestimable qualities in such a hot and thirst-producing climate.
We visited one of the sago factories, and found their water remarkably good; and when I and Mr. Veitch went out one evening snipe and pigeon-shooting on a plain behind we came across an aqueduct formed of large bamboo stems, in which this water was conveyed from a spring nearly a mile away. I was very much interested in the old Chinaman’s garden, which contained a fair assortment of fruits and flowers. The lively white-flowered Pancratium zeylanicum was blooming beautifully in one of the well-watered beds. The mangoes were large, and of excellent flavour. In exploring the garden behind the house I came across our host’s coffin standing on supports in one of the sheds. It was large and curiously shaped, and made of some dark durable wood highly valued by the wealthy Chinese. Most Chinese settlers here, when sufficiently wealthy, send to China for one of these coffins, which is preserved until their death. Nearly all the Chinese settlers here in the capital are married to Malay women, and healthy children generally result from these unions. On the other hand, the Malay or Bornean women rarely bear children when married to Europeans, and if so, the children are generally unhealthy, and they themselves rarely have offspring. No doubt the Malays of the capital are gradually becoming absorbed by intermarrying with the native Bornean women of the Murut, Kadyan, and other inland tribes. Many of the Malays, so called, closely resemble the aboriginals in physiognomy, and the common people or Bruneis may be characterised as an ugly and immoral lot of mongrels. Now and then traces of African blood are seen.
Nowhere else in Borneo are the men such liars and thieves as here, and the Brunei women have been described by a former writer as being perhaps “the most immoral in the whole world.” Of classical celebrities, Cato and Phryne are certainly well represented in this great water city of the far East. The climate is sultry. A large upas tree is pointed out to all comers, and it is a fine specimen, standing on the right bank of the river, just below the town, near some ancient tombs. A burial-ground, indeed, occupies nearly the whole right bank of the river from just beyond the Consulate as far as the sago factory. One or two of the tombs are large, and built of stone, with entrance gates; but most are small, with perhaps only a large stone to mark the spot.
The capital, as also the towns all along the coast, suffers now and then from epidemic diseases, cholera and small-pox being the most common. Senõr Quateron, the old padre, now resident in Labuan, formerly had a mission here, and the remains of his chapel still stand on the left bank of the Brunei river, a little below the town. As seen coming down the stream, it forms a picturesque object, a white campanile standing on a grassy knoll, the blue peaks of Molu towering up into the sky behind. I should think that Brunei, of all other places in Borneo, is the last at which missionaries of any denomination would be likely to succeed. Their sphere is not with Mahomedans, whose faith is good, so far as it teaches cleanliness and temperance; but with the aboriginals of the interior, who are thrifty, honest, and truthful to a fault, and who have no systematic faith unless their belief in the cries and motions of birds and animals, and other omens can be so called. With these people missionaries would doubtless be successful, but they must be hard-working men who could teach these gentle savages the benefits of civilisation without introducing its vices.
A missionary has thus recorded his impressions of life among the natives near Sarawak:—“A message came to me from one of the Christians on the Kabo, asking me to go up and see them. Accordingly, as soon as I could get a boat ready we were on our way down the Sebetan river .… the wild, sombre, solitary feeling of the primæval forest, the easy motion of the boat, the cheeriness of the paddling Dyaks, united to produce a sensation of repose and awe.…. Next morning we soon came to the first waterfall rushing and roaring over the rocks. Here we had to halt and stow away the palm-leaf awnings, and pull the boat over the fall. Then one could not help feeling the charms of tropical scenery,—the clear stream running over a pebbly bottom, rocks here and there with occasional tufts of vegetation forming little islets in mid river, hills on each bank running down perpendicularly to the water’s edge and covered with creepers, moss, wild palms, and ferns, magnificent trees on either side stretching their branches into triumphal arches overhead. Soon the whole scene was changed, clouds gathered, and thunder rumbled, and down came the rain in a continuous torrent. Towards evening we arrived at our destination like so many drowned rats. In the evening I held service under difficulties, there being no prayer-house, and the long public verandah of the house being the only available place. The dignity of worship suffers terribly in such circumstances. No sooner do we begin than dogs begin to fight, or a child to cry, or an unsympathetic heathen at the other end of the house to make some discordant row, or a fighting cock will fly right into the midst of the kneeling assembly, and distract everyone’s attention.”
The condition of the natives near the capital is not nearly so good as at Kina Balu, a hundred and fifty miles away, if we except the Kadyans, who being Mahomedans, and having powerful friends in Brunei, are able to resist many of the taxes which the Muruts of the Limbang and elsewhere are called upon to pay. I made two visits here to the capital, and made a boat journey up the Limbang and Pandarowan rivers as far as Bukit Sagan. This trip was made in the wet season, and took twelve men three days, owing to the heavy freshes against which they had to pull. The Pandarowan river is small compared with the Limbang, of which it is a tributary; but it is, without exception, the loveliest river I ever saw. At the end of the second day after leaving the capital we reached a large house belonging to the Muruts of this district. It stood in a little clearing close beside the stream, and was nearly a hundred yards in length. A rude pathway of tree trunks lay on the muddy shore reaching to one end of the building. We landed here to cook our dinner, and clambered up into the house by a rude stair formed of a notched tree trunk. The Muruts looked rather surprised to see such visitors, but spread mats for us, and gave us some firewood and water. After dinner we had a smoke with the head-man, a fine muscular old fellow, nearly six feet high. About fifty men, women, and children swarmed round the circle, of which a wood fire was the centre, to get a peep at us. The head-man’s wife was a young and rather handsome girl, having a fine dusky little baby swung behind her, and several other of the younger married women and girls were comely, with dark eyes and luxuriant hair. Others, however, were less attractive, and many of both sexes were troubled with peculiar skin diseases. We engaged two men of this tribe to go with us as far as Bukit Sagan, as our men did not exactly know the best place at which to land. We slept by the fire until about two o’clock, when the rain, which had been coming down heavily all day, ceased, and the silver moon being nearly at the full, it quite illumined the stream as it sped past the house. The mosquitoes became very troublesome, and so I called the men and went down to the boat. After shouting for about half an hour, the Muruts came down and took their places; and pulling across the current, we crept up stream beneath the arching plumes of the Nipa palm, which is here abundant. It was hard work for the men, although we had now fourteen paddles. A sharp look-out had to be kept for snags and floating trunks of trees, several of which we saw shooting past us mid stream. Our Labuan men were rather afraid, and several times wanted to make fast until daybreak. At one place the boat struck heavily and keeled over in an alarming way, but we found the obstruction was a raft of the stems of the sago palm, which some Muruts had felled and lashed near the bank ready for floating down to their rude washing-sheds below. This heavy bump woke up our men, several of whom had previously been dozing, although paddling the while, and we got along for a mile or two in first-rate style. Then, in crossing the current, at an awkward bend we were well-nigh washed away; indeed, had it not been for the silent but strenuous exertions of our Murut guides, the alligators would possibly have had a feed. The stream for the moment got the better of our men, but by a clever touch of the paddle our guides steered us through safely, and a steady pull for an hour longer brought us to the foot of the hill where we were to land. We made our rattan-rope fast to a tree, and slept until nearly daybreak. One man told us in the morning that he had not slept a wink all night, as he was afraid our “painter” would part; but it stood the strain well, although the boat had swung about and tugged a good deal, owing to the swift current running down. The scene at sunrise was lovely; every stem and leaf was covered with dew-drops, and the hazy golden mist, through which palms, tree-ferns, and curious leafage of all descriptions loomed out more and more plainly until we saw everything in the foreground quite distinctly. It was a transformation scene on a gigantic scale, and its loveliness was such as only Turner at his best could have portrayed. The delicate arching outline of the nebong palms was sharply defined against the sky overhead, and large masses of a wild musa fringed both banks with immense leaves and clusters of delicate rosy bracts.
How comes it that none of our good landscape-painters ever visit the tropics, where the beauty of form and colour in the landscapes is more glorious than anywhere else, and yet nearly all the tropical pictures one sees remind one of the daubs of a bad scene-painter? Here and there clumps of bamboo reminded one of the early summer freshness of the weeping willow beside the silvery trout streams at home. A gorgeous scarlet-flowered climbing bauhinia draped some of the low trees which nestled down near the water. We turned out for a ramble with our guns while our people cooked breakfast. I never saw birds so numerous in Borneo before. The first shot brought down a little green tree-pigeon, with a magenta stain on its white breast and on its head. A Kadyan boy we had with us blazed away with an old Tower musket to his heart’s content, and surprised us by bringing in a long-tailed rufous-brown species of pigeon, which we had first secured in the Sulu Islands. Two or three other rare Bornean birds were obtained. Breakfast over, we set about climbing. Our path lay through the tall forest, and in places the undergrowth was so thick that our guides and men had to cut us a path with their parongs. For the first mile or two vegetation was scanty, but as we ascended ferns and selaginellas became more plentiful. We stayed here and there to examine fallen trees for epiphytal orchids, which however were far from abundant. About half way up the hill we came to a gorge, down which a considerable body of water flows, but it is screened from sight by huge boulders, which lie near together, forming a sort of “giant’s causeway,” across which we picked our way. We peered down the chasms, but could not catch a glimpse of the stream, although we could hear it quite plainly as it forced its way among the stones far below. In one wet spot several species of aroids formed a little colony all to themselves. Of those collected in flower, one proved distinct enough to be made the type of a new genus when submitted to the botanical authorities at Kew. It grew in tufts on wet mossy stones, forming rather compact plants a foot in height. The spathe is of a bright rose colour, borne on a scape nearly as long as the leaves. I was especially interested in this plant, as I had seen a species singularly like it beside the Haya Haya stream at the foot of Kina Balu. As we approached the summit, we were stopped at one place by a perpendicular wall of sandstone rock, and we had to make a wearisome detour in order to gain the crest. I had been led to explore this hill at all risks, having been told by natives that a golden large-flowered phalænopsis was here to be found, but after a hot and weary search on rock and tree alike, no trace of any species of this genus could be found; and as I afterwards offered my informants a month’s wages if they would bring me a flower of it without any result, I am inclined to think the thing a myth, like its “bright scarlet” congener. The only thing which consoled me for my disappointment was a beautiful golden-blossomed dendrobium, which has always been rare in our gardens; and I was also enabled to collect a large number of Vanda Hookeri. This last is the “Golden Duck” orchid of the Brunei Malays, and exists in quantity in the marshes near the river, and always, so far as I saw it, epiphytal, on a slender-stemmed red-fruited pandan.
This hill is not above five or six hundred feet above the sea, and yet on its crest the air was quite fresh and cool. We obtained extensive views from the top over a well-wooded country. Neither pitcher plants nor rhododendrons were seen, although both exist abundantly on the Lawas hills, only a few miles away. In descending a wide detour was made through the forest in search of plants, but distinct forms were rare. On reaching the boat we bathed, and changed our clothes, which was necessary, as we were drenched to the skin, and covered with dirt from the half-rotten tree-trunks, over which we had scrambled. It was about three o’clock, of course very hot; and our boat formed quite an attraction to the bees, butterflies, and some lovely blue day-flying moths, which fluttered in the sunshine. The wild bees were indeed rather troublesome; and some of the men who were nervous at their proximity, and began to buffet them, were stung. As we ate our luncheon of boiled rice and jam, they frequently settled on our plates, but they did not attack us.
The journey down the river was an easy and pleasant one. The water, which had been so high and turbid the night before, had now regained its proper level, and except exactly amid stream the surface was as smooth as a mirror. The curving nipa leaves and other vegetation were most sharply reflected from the placid surface, so clearly indeed, that one could scarcely see where reality ended, and the shadow began. The presence of the nipa palm beside the banks of eastern rivers, is almost always evidence of deep water. In the shallow parts the pink-blossomed banana and bauhinia-draped trees were most beautiful, here and there varied by elegant groups of pandanus. We stayed at intervals to examine the vegetation more closely, and did not reach the Murut settlement before nightfall.
We paid off our guides, and stayed here an hour or two to rest our men. We slept in the boat, and found the mosquitoes very voracious. When the moon rose we continued our journey. In Bornean travel, near the coast, boats form the best conveyance. There are no horses, nor indeed roads suitable for them; so that all journeys inland must be performed on foot. Buffaloes may in some places be obtained. If no heavy loads have to be carried, however, one may travel quicker without them, except where deep and rapid flowing streams have to be forded, and there they are most useful.