180 EAMBLES OF A NATUEAIIST. [Oh. XI. 



Head-hunting, it is true, is now abolished in the Sarawak 

 territory ; but that part of Borneo which lies opposite to the 

 island of Labuan is peopled by tribes which have no such 

 scruples. Indeed the proximity of that side of Labuan 

 occupied by the half-dozen Europeans constituting the 

 government of the colony, to the lawless and half savage 

 tribes of the opposite coast, easily visible at four or five miles 

 distance, often struck me as offering singular advantages for 

 an exterminating raid ; and I have sometimes, as I lay 

 awake on dark and stormy nights in a solitary bungalow on 

 the sea-shore, speculated what there might be to prevent a 

 prahu fuU of natives from landing on the beach, surprising 

 and murdering us without the chance of resistance, and 

 either getting back .to the mainland without possibility of 

 pursuit, after rifiing the house, or carrying their extermina- 

 tion to the next bungalow, and indeed to all the European 

 residences on that side. There really is nothing to prevent 

 such a catastrophe, nor has been for the last 20 years, 

 except the moral influence which European power has over 

 the native mind. . There is usually, but by no means always, 

 a gun-boat in Victoria harbour, — in reahty, a perfectly 

 ineffectual defence against a weU-planned attack ; but the 

 natives having seen the resistless power of these vessels 

 against their piratical prahus, have a wholesome fear of such 

 a force ; and even though no gun-boat may be in the harbour, 

 or within a thousand miles, they have a salutary behef that 

 one is always at hand, and within caU ; and, moreover, that 

 wherever they may be, vengeance will surely follow them, 

 and inevitably find them out. 



