BRITISH BORNEO. 31 
may be secluded for the rest of her life, and, as her charms 
wane her supply of both food and clothing is reduced to the 
lowest limit. 
By the treaty with Great Britain traffic in slaves is put 
down, that is, Borneo is no longer the mart where, as in for- 
mer days, the pirates can bring in their captives for sale; but 
the slaves already in the place have not been liberated, and 
a slave’s children are slaves, so that domestic slavery, as it 
is termed, exists on a very considerable scale in Brunai. 
Slaves were acquired in the old days by purchase from pirates 
and, on any pretext, from the Pagan tribes of Borneo. For 
instance, if a feudal chief of an outlying river was in want of 
some cash, nothing was easier than for him to convict a man, 
who was the father of several children, of some imaginary 
offence, or neglect of duty, and his children, girls and boys, 
would be seized and carried off to Brunai as slaves. A favourite 
method was that of ‘‘forced trade.’’ The chief would send a 
large quantity of trade goods toa Pagan village and leave 
them there to be sold at one hundred per cent. or more above 
their proper value, all legitimate trade being prohibited mean- 
while, and if the money or barter goods were not forthcoming 
when demanded, the deficiency would be made up in slaves. 
This kind of oppression was very rife in the neighbourhood 
of the capital when I first became acquainted with Borneo in 
1871, but the power of the chiefs has been much curtailed of 
late, owing to the extensive cessions of territory to Sarawak 
and the British North Borneo Company, and their hold on the 
rivers left to them has become very precarious, since the war- 
like Kyans passed under Raja BROOKE’S sway. This tribe, 
once the most powerful in Borneo, was always ready at the 
Sultan’s call to raid on any tribe who had incurred his dis- 
pleasure and revelled in the easy acquisition of fresh heads, 
over which to hold the triumphal dance. The Brunai Malays 
are not a warlike race, and the Rajas find that, without the 
Kyans, they are as a tiger with its teeth drawn and its claws 
pared, and the Pagan tribes have not been slow to make 
the discovery for themselves. Those on the Limbang river 
have been in open rebellion for the last three or four years 
