106 THE PRESENT STATE OF THE CAPITAL. 



enable them to fill, with profit to the nation and honour 

 to themselves, the high station in it which they are 

 born to occupy. The great fear is, that should the 

 life of the present unprincipled and idiotic tyrant 

 be long continued, his maladministration, or, more 

 properly speaking, that of his corrupt advisers, may 

 reduce the country to so low a state, that to raise it 

 again will be impossible ; but the talents and energy 

 of Mr. Brooke, the governor of the new settlement at 

 Labuh-an, are a sufficient guarantee, that if it should be 

 thought advisable to continue Omar Ali in the govern- 

 ment, he will be surrounded by advisers who will have 

 at heart more than their master the interests of the 

 kingdom and of the heirs to the throne. 



We have seen that at the visit of Pigafetta the capital 

 alone was estimated to contain 25,000 families : 200 

 years after, it was computed to be only 40,000 persons, 

 with a Chinese population in its neighbourhood, em- 

 ployed in the cultivation of pepper, amounting to 

 30,000 persons. At present the town may be said to 

 be in ruins ; the houses being no longer built of wood, 

 and on those strong posts described by Pigafetta, but 

 of atap leaves and on nibong posts, which are fre- 

 quently in a very tottering condition. 



The present native population is not estimated to 

 exceed 12,000, and the Chinese have altogether 

 disappeared, the very few that are occasionally seen 

 having been reduced by the Borneans to slavery ; 

 thus by the dissensions of the nobles and princes has 

 a once powerful and flourishing state been reduced 



