514 TRACES OF THE ORIGIN OF THE MALAY KINGDOM 
tion favourable for trade, and the previous Inhabitants, if any, either 
willing 1 to allow the settlement of strangers, or easy of conquest. If 
it is successful, other rivers in the neighbourhood are aftei wards oc¬ 
cupied. The new settlements attract attention in the native coun¬ 
try of the founders, where numerous scions of the royal family are 
always ready to become the leaders of colonizing enterprises. The 
lam Tuan gives one of these authority over the new colonies, where 
his power is at once recognized as of divine right, and where he 
rules without more than a nominal dependence on the parent state. 
In former times princes and chiefs often placed themselves at the 
head of expeditions to open settlements (bukanagrf.) In the course 
of time, the new country becoming populous and strong, and the 
ties of consanguinity that bound the chief to the royal family of the 
parent state weakened, absolute independence is assumed. In this 
manner we may be sure the kingdom of Johore itself first took 
form, and not from any single company of adventurers, although it 
remained obscure until Sri Trfbuana established himself at Singa¬ 
pore. In the same way, in all probability, the Johore Malays spread 
themselves along the northern and western coast of Borneo.* In 
the rivers the same relations with the natives would be established 
from the first as in those of the Peninsula, and there, as here, we 
find them lasting to the present hour. 
We cannot now discover at what period the Malays first occupied 
Borneo. They were doubtless long preceded by Ilindu-Javanese, 
but the flourishing condition in which Brund was found in the be¬ 
ginning of the sixteenth century, and the purely Malayan character 
of it and all the other rivers visited by the Portuguese, afford strong 
probable proofs that its origin was long prior to the final establish¬ 
ment of Mahomedanism in Java (1478). Mr. Crawfurd in 1824 
mentions^ that, according to the Borneans, the emigration from Jo- 
* Islands seem always to have facilitated the extension of Malays, and 
those between the Peninsula and Borneo have from time immemorial been 
frequented not only by Malays, but by the ruder sea tribes of the Job ore 
Archipelago. 
■f In an excellent paper on Borneo Proper which appeared in an early 
number of the Singapore Chronicle. It is given as an editorial, but the 
authorship cannot be mistaken. 
