“In the evening I ordered a fine boat to be prepared for the war with Sarebus and Sakarran, which appears to me inevitable; as it is impossible, laying all motives of humanity aside, to allow these piratical tribes to continue their depredations, which are inconsistent with safety, and a bar to all trade along the coast. Eighty prahus of Sarebus and Sakarran are reported to be ready, and waiting for further reinforcements before putting to sea.
“19th.—Information of three more of my Dyaks being cut off in the interior by the predatory tribes.
“20th.—Opened the subject of restoring the old Patingi, Bandar, and Tumangong, and found Muda Hassim quite willing, but wishing to wait till he hears from Borneo; at the same time telling me that I might employ them in their respective situations. This matter I consider, therefore, settled; and as these men are natives, and have the command of all the common people, and are, moreover, willing to serve under me, I conceive it a great advance in my government. Since my return here they have proved themselves faithful and ready; but though true in adversity, will they continue equally so in prosperity? I hope the best from them, especially as their circumstances will be easy; and I will endeavor to pay them as much as I can. Pay well, and men may be trusted. Either way, it is a great advance; for every change will not occur immediately; and, in the mean time, I shall be strengthened by in-comers, especially Chinese, so that the parties may be balanced, and each look to me as the link which holds them together. The government must be a patchwork between good and evil, abolishing only so much of the latter as is consistent with safety. But never must I appear in the light of a reformer, political or religious; for to the introduction of new customs, apparently trivial, and the institution of new forms, however beneficial, the disgust of the semi-barbarous races may be traced. People settled like myself too often try to create a Utopia, and end with a general confusion. The feeling of the native which binds him to his chief is destroyed, and no other principle is substituted in its stead; and as the human mind more easily learns ill than good, they pick up the vices of their governors without their virtues, and their own good qualities disappear, the bad of both races remaining without the good of either.
“We are in active preparation to fit out a fleet to meet the piratical Dyaks. The rajah has a fine prahu, which I have taken in hand to repair, and I have purchased a second; and the two, with three or four small canoes, will be able to cope with a hundred or a hundred and fifty Dyak boats. The largest of these boats is worth a description. Fifty-six feet in length and eight in breadth; built with a great sheer, so as to raise the bow and stern out of the water, and pulling thirty paddles, she is a dangerous customer when mounting four swivels and carrying a crew of twenty men with small arms. She is called the ‘Snake,’ or ‘Ular.’ The second boat, somewhat shorter and less fast, is named the ‘Dragon;’ her complement of paddles twenty, and her fighting-men twenty, make one hundred and forty in, two boats. The long canoes carry fifteen men each, which will bring the force up to one hundred and eighty-five; and one boat of the rajahʼs will complete two hundred men, of whom nearly one hundred are armed with muskets.
“To show the system of these people, I may mention that one of the principal men proposed to me to send to Sakarran and Sarebus, and intimate that I was about to attack Siquong (a large interior tribe), and invite them to assist. ‘They will all come,’ he said: ‘nothing they will like so well; and when they are up the Samarahan river, we will sally forth, attack; and destroy them at one blow.’ My answer was, that I could not deceive; but if they did come, I would attack them.
“Feb. 1st.—Matari, or ‘the Sun,’ the Sakarran chief I have already mentioned, arrived with two boats, and paid me several visits. He assured me he wanted to enter into an agreement, to the effect that neither should injure the other. To this treaty I was obliged to add the stipulation, that he was neither to pirate by sea nor by land, and not to go, under any pretence, into the interior of the country. His shrewdness and cunning were remarkably displayed. He began by inquiring, if a tribe, either Sakarran or Sarebus, pirated on my territory, what I intended to do. My answer was, ‘To enter their country and lay it waste.’ But he asked me again, ‘You will give me, your friend, leave to steal a few heads occasionally?’ ‘No,’ I replied, ‘you cannot take a single head; you cannot enter the country: and if you or your countrymen do, I will have a hundred Sakarran heads for every one you take here.’ He recurred to this request several times: ‘just to steal one or two!’ as a schoolboy would ask for apples. There is no doubt that the two tribes of Sakarran and Sarebus are greatly addicted to head-hunting, and consider the possession as indispensable. The more a man has, the greater his honor and rank; nor is there anything without to check or ameliorate this barbarous habit; for the Malays of all classes, on this coast, take the same pride in heads as the Dyaks themselves, with the exception that they do not place them in their houses, or attach any superstitious ideas to them.
“I asked Matari what was the solemn form of agreement among his tribes; and he assured me the most solemn was drinking each otherʼs blood, in which case it was considered they were brothers; but pledging the blood of fowls was another and less solemn form.
“On the 26th of January the Royalistʼs boat, with Captain Hart and Mr. Penfold, second mate, of the Viscount Melbourne, arrived here. The reason, it appears, of the Royalist coming was, to seek the missing crew of the Viscount Melbourne, a large ship wrecked on the Luconia shoal. The captain in the launch, with some Coolies; the first and third mates, with Colonel Campbell of the 37th, M.N.I., in a cutter; the second mate, Mr. Penfold, and the surgeon, in the second cutter; a fourth boat with twenty-five Lascars, and the jolly-boat, making in all five boats, left the vessel well provisioned, and steered in company for the coast, which they made somewhere between Borneo and Tanjong Barram. The fourth boat was missed the night they made the land; and being all at anchor, and the weather fine, it was strongly suspected that the twenty-five Lascars deserted with her.
“The other four boats proceeded a day or two, when the first cutter, with Colonel Campbell on board, went in the evening in search of water; and though the rest showed lights all night, returned no more. They were, on the following day, attacked by a prahu, which fired into them and severely wounded one man, and succeeded in capturing the jolly-boat; but finding nothing in her, set her on fire—Lascars and all. The crew, however, was rescued, and she was abandoned; and the two remaining boats, in course of time, arrived at Singapore. The Royalist was taken up by government to seek the missing boats, and just touched here for an hour or two, the boat coming up while the vessel kept the sea.
“Feb. 9th.—Mr. Williamson returned from Sanpro, where I sent him to watch a party of natives who had gone among the Dyaks; the Panglima Sadome, of the tribe of Sanpro, came with him, and brought the lamentable account of the death of eight more Dyaks, cut off by the Sakarrans. It frets me dreadfully; however, on the whole I see a vast improvement, and a degree of confidence in me arising among the Dyaks, greater than I expected.