Sarawak has to-day a coast-line of over four hundred miles, with an area of fifty thousand square miles, and a population of three hundred thousand souls. The country produces gold, silver, diamonds, antimony, quicksilver, coal, gutta-percha, rubber, canes, rattan, camphor, beeswax, edible bird’s-nests, sago, tapioca, pepper, and tobacco, all of which find their way to Singapore, and thence to Europe and America.
The Rajah is absolute head of the state; but he is advised by a legislative council composed of two Europeans and five native chiefs. He has a navy of a number of small but effective gunboats, and a well-trained and officered army of several hundred men, who look after the wild tribes of the interior of Borneo and guard the great coast-line from piratical excursions; otherwise they would be useless, as his rule is almost fatherly, and he is dearly beloved by his people.
It is impossible in one short sketch to relate a tenth of the daring deeds and startling adventures of these two white rajahs. Their lives have been written in two bulky volumes, and the American boy who loves stories that rival his favorite authors of adventure will find them by going to the library and asking for the “Life of the Rajah of Sarawak.”
There is much in this “Life” that might be read by our statesmen and philanthropists with profit; for the building of a kingdom in a jungle of savage men and savage beasts places the name of Brooke of Borneo among those of the world’s great men, as it does among those of the heroes of adventure.
One evening we were pacing back and forth on the deck of the Rajah’s magnificent gunboat, the Raneé. A soft tropical breeze was blowing off shore. Thousands of lights from running rickshas and bullock carts were dancing along the wide esplanade that separates the city of Singapore from the sea. The strange old-world cries from the natives came out to us in a babel of sound.
Chinese in sampans and Malays in praus were gliding about our bows and back and forth between the great foreign men-of-war that overshadowed us. The Orient was on every hand, and I looked wonderingly at the slightly built, gray-haired man at my side, with a feeling that he had stepped from out some wild South Sea tale.
“Your Highness,” I said, as we chatted, “tell me how you made subjects out of pirates and head-hunters, when our great nation, with all its power and gold, has only been able after one hundred years to make paupers out of our Indians.”
“Do you see that man?” he replied, pointing to a stalwart, brown-faced Dyak, who in the blue and gold uniform of Sarawak was leaning idly against the bulwarks. “That is the Dato (Lord) Imaum, Judge of the Supreme Court of Sarawak. He was one of the most redoubtable of the Suloo pirates. My uncle fought him for eight years. In all that time he never broke his word in battle or in truce. When Sir James was driven from his throne by the Chinese, the Dato Imaum fought to reinstate him as his master.
“Civilization is only skin deep, and so is barbarism. Had your country never broken its word and been as just as it is powerful, your red men would have been to-day where our brown men are—our equals.”
An hour later I stepped into my launch, which was lying alongside. The American flag at the peak came down, and the guns of the Raneé belched forth the consular salute.