346 MY LIFE 



quite astonished to find that they knew it much better than I 

 did, and could make all sorts of new figures I had never seen. 

 They were also very clever at tricks with string on their 

 fingers, which seemed to be a favourite amusement. Many of 

 the remoter tribes think the rajah cannot be a man. They ask 

 all sorts of curious questions about him — Whether he is not 

 as old as the mountains; whether he cannot bring the dead to 

 life; and I have no doubt, for many years after his death, he 

 will be held to be a deity and expected to come back again. 



" I have now seen a good deal of Sir James, and the more 

 I see of him the more I admire him. With the highest 

 talents for government he combines in a high degree good- 

 ness of heart and gentleness of manner. At the same time, 

 he has so much self-confidence and determination that he 

 has put down with the greatest ease the conspiracies of one 

 or two of the Malay chiefs against him. It is a unique case 

 in the history of the world for a private English gentleman 

 to rule over two conflicting races — a superior and an inferior 

 — with their own consent, without any means of coercion, 

 but depending solely upon them both for protection and sup- 

 port, while at the same time he introduces some of the best 

 customs of civilization, and checks all crimes and barbarous 

 practices that before prevailed. Under his government ' run- 

 ning-a-muck,' so frequent in other Malay countries, has never 

 taken place, and in a population of about 30,000 Malays, almost 

 all of whom carry their kris, and were accustomed to revenge 

 an insult with a stab, murders only occur once in several years. 

 The people are never taxed except with their own consent, and 

 in the manner most congenial to them, while almost the whole 

 of the rajah's private fortune has been spent in the improve- 

 ment of the country or for its benefit. Yet this is the man who 

 has been accused in England of wholesale murder and butchery 

 of unoffending tribes to secure his own power ! " 



In my next letter (from Singapore in February, 1856) I 

 say — " I have now left Sarawak, where I began to feel quite 

 at home, and may perhaps never return to it again, but I 

 shall always look back with pleasure to my residence there 

 and to my acquaintance with Sir James Brooke, who is a 



