The boa-constrictor—sawar, as the Malays called it—lived in the jungle and rice-swamps. Sometimes it attained an enormous size. An Englishman told me that he and some Malays were exploring the jungle to find traces of antimony ore, and came to an opening in the wood, across which they saw the body of a sawar as thick as his own—he was not very stout—moving along; but they never saw either the head or tail of that snake, for, after watching its progress for a long time, they were seized with a panic at its enormous length, and fled.
A Malay whom we knew very well, Abong Hassan by name, and a mighty hunter, told us that once, when he was seeking deer in the forest, towards evening he sat down to rest, and cook his rice, on what he thought was a great fallen tree. While thus occupied, he felt his seat moving from under him, and, starting up, found he had been making use of a huge sawar lying inert and distended with food. He killed it, and found a full-grown deer in its stomach. These snakes must live to a great age, and grow always, to attain such a size.
Some people kept a small boa in their house to kill rats, but we found they were equally fond of chickens, and therefore not desirable inmates; for at Sarawak chickens were the principal animal food to be had, and it was necessary to keep a stock of them.
After some years we built up the lower story of the mission-house with bricks, to make it more substantial and cooler. The ground floor was at first wholly occupied with the school, the dormitory on one side, the matron's and girls' room on the other, and a large schoolroom through the centre of the house. A similar room over it was our dining-room, and was used for divine service until the church was finished. The library and our bedroom were over the boys' dormitory, and bedrooms for missionaries on the other side. There were also three rooms in the roof, which made good bedrooms, but were too hot for use in the daytime. The roof was covered with shingles of balean-wood, which only grows harder and darker coloured from rain and use. They were blown off sometimes in the storms to which we were subject, but were otherwise more lasting than any other kind of roofing. We used to call this house Noah's Ark, from the variety of its occupants. A bell hung in the porch roof, and rung at different hours to call the workmen and regulate the school. The people in the town got so used to it that, when we discontinued it for a time, they sent a petition that it might begin again, for without it they never knew what o'clock it was. When the school outgrew this house we built another for the boys, their master, and the matron, close by; but I always kept the girls with us until Julia married, when they were sent to the Quop, in charge of the missionary's wife there.
Long before we left the court-house, Mr. and Mrs. Wright decided to give up the Sarawak mission, and went to Singapore, where Mr. Wright became master to the Raffles Institution for the education of boys. We were therefore quite alone until February, 1851, when the Bishop of Calcutta paid us a visit to consecrate the church, and brought with him Mr. Fox from Bishop's College, to be catechist, with a view to his future ordination. Very soon after him came the Rev. Walter Chambers from England, and about the same time Mr. Nicholls also arrived from Bishop's College; but, as he only wished to stay for two years in the country, he had scarcely time to learn the language before he returned to Calcutta.
CHAPTER IV.
PIRATES.
When we first lived at Sarawak, the coasts and the seas from Singapore to China were infested with pirates. "It is in the Malay's nature," says a Dutch writer, "to rove the seas in his prahu, as it is in the Arab to wander with his steed on the sands of the desert." Before the English and Dutch Governments exerted themselves to put down piracy in the Eastern seas, there were communities of these Malays settled in various parts of the coast of Borneo, who made it the business of their lives to rob and destroy all the vessels they could meet with, either killing the crews or reducing them to slavery. For this purpose they went out in fleets of from ten to thirty war-boats or prahus. These boats were about ninety feet long; they carried a large gun in the bow and three or four lelahs, small brass guns, in each broadside, besides twenty or thirty muskets. Each prahu was rowed by sixty or eighty oars in two tiers, and carried from eighty to a hundred men. Over the rowers, and extending the whole length of the vessel, was a light flat roof, made of split bamboo, and covered with mats. This protected the ammunition and provisions from rain, and served as a platform on which they mounted to fight, from which they fired their muskets and hurled their spears. These formidable boats skulked about in the sheltered bays of the coast, at the season of the year when they knew that merchant-vessels would be passing with rich cargoes for the ports of Singapore, Penang, or to and from China. A scout-boat, with but few men in it, which would not excite suspicion, went out to spy for sails. They did not generally attack large or armed ships, although many a good-sized Dutch or English craft, which had been becalmed or enticed by them into dangerous or shallow water, was overpowered by their numbers. But it was usually the small unarmed vessels they fell upon, with fearful yells, binding those they did not kill, and burning the vessel after robbing it, to avoid detection. While the south-west monsoon lasted, the pirates lurked about in uninhabited creeks and bays until the trading season was over. But when the north-east monsoon set in, they returned to their settlements, often rich in booty, and with blood on their hands, only to rejoice over the past, and prepare for next year's expedition. There are still some nests of pirates in the north of Borneo, although of late the Spaniards have done much to exterminate them. But when Sir James Brooke first visited Sarawak, the nobles there, and their sultan at Bruni, used to permit, nay, encourage, piratical raids against their own subjects at a little distance, provided they shared in the profits of the expedition, thus impoverishing the country they ruled, and putting a stop to all native trade—a short-sighted and wicked policy. It took a good many years of stern resistance on Sir James Brooke's part before the Bruni nobles could be cured of their connivance of pirates, whether Malay or Dyak.