THE SEA DYAKS OF BORNEO 
neo; and- made him a K. C. B.. The war- 
rant of investiture was issued by Her 
Majesty on May 22, 1848. 
The extirpation of piracy was the first 
step towards introducing into the coun- 
try the blessings of a settled govern- 
ment, with all its civilizing influences. 
But he was not satisfied with this, and 
soon began to take measures for the es- 
tablishment of a Christian mission in 
Sarawak. When Sir James Brooke vis- 
ited England in 1847, he appealed to the 
Church, and especially to the two uni- 
versities, to come to his aid. 
Neither of the two great missionary 
societies was able at the time to under- 
take this new enterprise through lack of 
funds, and a new organization, the “Bor- 
neo Church Mission,’ was founded, 
which labored in the island for a few 
years. Then, in 1854, the Society for 
the Propagation of the Gospel in For- 
eign Parts was able to take up the work, 
and has ever since been responsible for 
it. The original organization had, how- 
ever, done well in the choice of the mis- 
sionaries it sent out, the first of whom 
was the Rev. F. T. McDougall, who was 
consecrated Bishop of Labuan and Sara- 
wak in 1855. 
‘My father, the Rev. W. H. Gomes, 
B. D., worked under Bishop McDougall 
aS a missionary among the Dyaks of 
Lundu from 1852 to 1867, and I myself 
have worked, under Bishop Hose, as a 
missionary in Sarawak, for 17 years, and 
have thus gained an intimate knowledge 
of the people and of their lives, now so 
rapidly changing under western influ- 
ence. 
Sir James Brooke was a man of the 
highest personal character. That a 
young English officer, with a fortune of 
_ his own, should have been willing to de- 
vote his whole life to improving the con- 
dition of the Dyaks was a grand thing. 
That he should have been able, by per- 
fectly legitimate means, to do this in the 
teeth of much official and other opposi- 
tion; that he should have been able to 
put down piracy and head-hunting, with 
their unspeakable accompaniments of 
708 
misery and cruelty, and to do it all with 
the hearty good-will of the people under 
his rule—this was indeed an achieve- 
ment which might have seemed hardly 
possible. 
The present Rajah of Sarawak, Sir 
Charles Brooke, is a nephew of the first 
Rajah. He joined his uncle in 1852, 
when he held the rank of lieutenant in 
the British navy. For: ten years he 
played an important part in the arduous 
work of punishing rebels and establish- 
ing a sound government. In 1857, when 
the Chinese insurrection broke out, it 
was his action that led to the punish- 
ment of the insurgents and the restora- 
tion of peace. In 1863, on the retire- 
ment of the first Rajah, he assumed con- 
trol of the country, and five years later, 
on the death of his predecessor, he be- 
came Rajah of Sarawak. Ever since he 
became the responsible ruler of the coun- 
try Sarawak has advanced steadily and 
made great moral and material progress. 
To the general public the first Rajah will 
always appear the romantic, heroic fig- 
ure; but, while yieiding full measure of 
praise and admiration to the work of a 
great man, those who know the country 
will, I think, agree with me that the 
heavier burden of working steadily and 
unwearingly, when the romance of nov- 
elty had worn off, has been borne by his 
successor. With talents not less than 
those of his illustrious uncle, he has car- 
ried out, in the face of disappointments 
and the most serious obstacles, a policy 
of regeneration for which the striking 
exploits of Sir James Brooke merely 
paved the way. 
There are occasional outbreaks among 
the Dyaks of the interior, and head- 
hunting still survives where natives 
think there is a chance of escaping de- 
tection and consequent punishment. But, 
happily, these are getting more and more 
rare and do not affect the prosperity or 
trade of the country. 
The natives of Sarawak owe much to 
the Brookes. The work, nobly begun by 
Sir James Brooke, has been ably carried 
on by the present Rajah. To use his 
