22 BRITISH BORNEO. 
more important river—the Limbang—one on which the ex- 
istence of Brunai itself as an independent State may be 
said to depend. But the then reigning Sultan and the other 
Ministers of State refused their sanction, and the Tumonggong, 
since his accession to the throne, has also very decidedly 
changed his point of view, and is now in accord with the 
large majority of his Brunai subjects to whom such a cession 
would be most distasteful. It should be explained that the 
Limbang is an important sago-producing river, close to the 
capital and forming an actual portion of the Brunai river it- 
self, with the waters of which it mingles; indeed, the Brunai 
river is probably the former mouth of the Limbang, and is itself 
but a salt-water inlet, producing nothing but fish and prawns. 
As the Brunais themselves put it, the Limbang is their przuk 
nasi, their rice pot, an expression which gains the greater force 
when it is remembered that rice is the chief food with this 
eastern people, in a more emphatic sense even than bread is 
with us. This question of the Limbang river will afford a 
good instance and specimen of the oppressive government, 
or want of government, on the part of the Brunai rulers, and 
I will return to it again, continuing now my short glance at 
Sarawak’s progress. Raja BROOKE has had little difficulty 
in establishing his authority in the districts acquired from 
time to time, for not only were the people glad to be freed 
from the tyranny of the Brunai Rajas, but the fame of both 
the present Raja and cf his famous uncle Sir JAMES had 
spread far and wide in Borneo, and, in addition, it was 
well known that the Sarawak Government had at its back 
its war-like Dyak tribes, who, now that ‘‘head-hunting”’ 
has been stopped amongst them, would have heartily wel- 
comed the chance of a little legitimate fighting and “at the 
commandment of the Magistrate to wear weapons and 
serve in the wars,’ as the XXXVIIth Article of our Church 
permits. In the Trusan, the Sarawak flag was freely dis- 
tributed and joyfully accepted, and in a short time the 
Brunai river was dotted with little roughly ‘dug-out’”’ canoes, 
manned by repulsive-looking, naked, skin-diseased savages, 
each proudly flying an enormous Sarawak ensign, with its 
Christian symbol of the Cross, in the Muhammadan capital. 
