128 LABUAN AND BRUNEI. [chap. 



buildings with another, but for the most part all communication is 

 by water. The market is probably one of the most extraordinary 

 sights that the East has to show. Each stall is a canoe, and it 

 would puzzle an onlooker to form any estimate of their numbers, 

 for the water is covered with craft of all sizes in incessant motion. 

 At one moment there is a dense pack around some Chinaman or 

 other trader, and each vociferates the prices of the produce on sale. 

 At another there is a rush in the opposite dhection, and the former 

 buyer is deserted. Earely, except perhaps in the Bourse at Con- 

 stantinople, have I come across such an animated scene. The 

 occupants of the canoes are almost without exception women, and 

 for the most part old and ugly. Each wears a palm-leaf hat of 

 enormous^ size, which serves the purpose indeed of an umbrella 

 also, for it is large enough to protect the whole body from either 

 sun or rain. 



Our first night in Brunei was not a pleasant one. "Whether the 

 heat, the stenches, the mosquitos, or the incessant tom-toms were 

 the most unbearable it was hard to say, but any one of them would 

 alone have been sufficient to banish sleep. On the following- 

 afternoon we had an interview with the Sultan. His palace is a 

 dilapidated old building, only to be distinguished from the sun-ound- 

 ing houses by its decoration of a dozen or so of small flags, and by 

 the presence of a few antiquated Malay guns upon the platform. 

 In front of the house lay the royal barge at anchor. It is almost 

 too large to be paddled, and when the Sultan goes yachting, it is 

 generally towed by a steam launch. Amidships is a sort of carved 

 cupola, but otherwise there is no attempt at decoration, unless 

 mdeed the figure-head be excepted. This is no beauteous dame 

 with bosom bared to the ocean breezes, no stately goddess with 

 proudly-extended hand, such as one sees in back yards at Portsmouth 

 or Greenwich. It is something more refined, and at the same tune 

 more fitting, for, at the time of our visit, the poor old Sultan was 

 far advanced in his second infancy ,■• — it is a child's rocking-horse • 



^ He (lied in 1884, in his hundredth j'ear. 



