Rajah Brooke

by Sir Spenser St. John

I am afraid we should find great changes if we returned to Kina Balu, as Mr Whitehead mentions that the Company have found it necessary to send punitive expeditions against these Dusuns. I trust, however, that this is a mistake.

The next in importance to the Dusuns from their numbers are the Bajaus, who are still often called Sea Gipsies from their wandering habits, but many thousands of them have abandoned their old custom of living in boats and have settled on the lake-like Mengkabong river and in many other places along the north-west coast, until you reach Tampasuk, where, a few miles inland, they are numerous. The Bajaus are also to be found on the north and east coasts, and are there deemed a very useful class, as fishermen and collectors of sea produce for export to the China market.

The Lanuns, of marauding celebrity, lived formerly on the Lower Tampasuk and Padasan rivers, but since their pirate settlements were routed out by Sir Thomas Cochrane in 1846, they have gradually abandoned the coast, and retired to their own country, the great island of Mindanau. Probably a few who have intermarried with the Bajaus may still be left. They were a gallant, courteous people, but too lawless for our times.

On the north-east coast there is a very mixed population of people from the Sulu Islands—some Malays, many Bajaus, and since the advent of the Company, several Chinese and a few Europeans and Madrasees.

In Padas and Kalias and on the rivers to the south of Patatan, there are many Malays from Brunei; Kadayans, who are probably aborigines converted to Islam; many descendants of the ancient Chinese colony, who can still speak their old language, but dress and live like other natives of the island. From these curious mixtures of races are derived the industrious agriculturists of those districts.

The native Borneans of whatever race have shown no power to augment the population. The deaths appear almost to equal the births, but that may arise from the great neglect of the children, and the inability of the natives to combat epidemics—smallpox and cholera sometimes sweeping them off by thousands. These causes of depopulation may lessen under the influence of civilisation, but not to a very great extent.

The Company will have therefore to depend on the Chinese, and perhaps on the Japanese, for the future population, as their industry is undoubted, and the teeming millions of the parent countries can supply endless recruits. But it would be dangerous to rely upon these hard-working but turbulent people alone, and therefore a mixture of Javanese, Boyans and Tamils would be very desirable.

The Company have very rightly based their prosperity on agriculture, and have done much to encourage subsidiary associations in their efforts to cultivate tobacco, and in some respects with very great success, as the produce has been of first-rate quality and fetches very high prices. In fact, the soil appears particularly adapted to this valuable plant, but, as always occurs when any new business is started, insufficient capital, and managers without any idea of economical working, nearly wrecked this promising industry. It now appears to have passed this trying stage and established itself on a firm basis, and its prospects are excellent.

The soil of the east coast, and many districts of the west, appears suited to every tropical cultivation. Coffee, both Liberian and Asiatic, grows with astonishing vigour, even yielding fruit in the third year. In other countries the best coffee is grown on hills at least three thousand feet above the sea level, and planters in Borneo may find it worth their while to attend to this. It is in favour of planters that all the products they have essayed have flourished for generations before the advent of the Company. Coffee is found in the hills round the capital. I sent home excellent specimens of cotton grown on the north-west coast as long ago as in the Fifties, and Saba tobacco was famous and much preferred to the Javanese by all the natives of Brunei. We noticed at Kiau, on Kina Balu, how carefully the Dusuns cultivated their tobacco, keeping the fields perfectly clean. Pepper was grown by the Chinese throughout the last century, so that none of these products are experiments. They have simply to be grown by experienced managers, instead of by the careless native methods.

As yet the search for minerals has not been successful. Gold has been found in many districts, but has not hitherto been worked so as to prove a mercantile success. As, however, alluvial gold has been collected in several streams, the quartz reefs will yet be found, as in Sarawak, where, after more than fifty years of expectation, machinery has been erected to crush the stone. A small company has been formed in London to work the gold found in the sand and gravel banks in the Sigama river, which will be raised from its bed by a dredging machine. The latest accounts are that the dredger is already above the rapids, and had commenced working. There is nothing in the world like gold to attract population.