BRITISH BORNEO. 95 
terest depends upon the number of their fellow creatures they 
have killed in any engagement, or common disputes, and 
count their degrees of happiness to depend on the number of 
human skulls in their possession; from which, and the wild, 
disorderly life they lead, unrestrained by any bond of civil 
society, we ought not to be surprised if they are of a cruel and 
vindictive disposition.” I think this is rather a case of giving 
a dog a bad name. 
I heard read once at a meeting of the Royal Geographical 
Society, an eloquent paper on the Natives of the Andaman 
Islands, in which the lecturer, after shewing that the Anda- 
manese were suspicious, treacherous, blood-thirsty, ungrate- 
ful and untruthful, concluded by giving it as his opinion that 
they were very good fellows and in many ways superior to 
white man. 
I do not go quite so far as he does, but I must say that 
many of the aborigines are very pleasant good-natured crea- 
tures, and have a lot of good qualities in them, which, with 
care and discriminating legislation on the part of their new 
rulers, might be gradually ‘developed, while the evil qualities 
which they possess in common with all races of men, might 
be pari passu not “extinguished, but reduced to a minimum. 
But this result can only be secured by officers who are natur- 
ally of a sympathetic disposition and ready to take the trou- 
ble of studying tke natives and entering into their thoughts 
and aspirations. 
In many instances, the Company has been fortunate in its 
choice of officials, whose work has brought them into intimate 
connection with the aborigines. 
A besetting sin of young officers 1s to expect too much— 
they are conscious that their only aim is to advance the best 
interests of the natives, and they are surprised and hurt at, 
what they consider, the want of, gratitude and backwardness 
in seconding their efforts evinced by them. They forget that 
the people are as yet in the schoolboy stage, and should try 
and remember how, in their own schoolboy days, they offered 
opposition to the efforts of their masters for ¢hezr improve- 
ment, and how little gratitude they felt, at the time, for all 
that was done for them. Patience and sympathy are the two 
