OP BORNEO PROPER, 
519 
Brunt! must have risen into importance during the epoch of three 
centuries, anterior to the piratical invasion of the Archipelago by Eu¬ 
ropeans, when all the Malayan states of which Singapura was the pa¬ 
rent attained their most palmy condition. That the Malays never 
reached the same degree of maritime power and prosperity in Suma¬ 
tra must have arisen from the western side of the straits of Malacca, 
throughout the Malayan region, being totally unfitted for sea ports, or 
even for the approach of vessels in the days when charts of soundings 
were unknown. It is curious that it was not till the twelfth century 
that it occurred to them to form a port on the other side, in the great 
highway of navigation to the eastward. Sri Tribuana could have but 
slightly anticipated the extraordinary and rapid spread of the race, 
and developement of a new phase of its civilization, which was to 
ensue from his occupying a good maritim position. The discovery 
once made was not lost. When expelled by the Javanese from their 
first settlement the Singaporeans neither fled to the eastern coast, re¬ 
treated into Sumatra, nor remained in the Muar, but proceeded fur¬ 
ther up the straits of Malacca till they came to the first good locality 
for another sea port, with a harbour lying in the very channel of east¬ 
ern navigation. 
That no very populous and powerful state ever grew up in Bor¬ 
neo is partly to be attributed to its comparative distance from the 
Peninsula and Java, and its want of the commercial advantages of 
the ports on the straits of Malacca, but chiefly to the inferiority of 
the soil and to the large and simple indigenous population, which 
from the first impressed a peculiar character on the Malay commu¬ 
nities, by pampering their indolence and rapacity. If the soil had 
yielded luxuriant crops of rice instead of gold and diamonds, Bor¬ 
neo would have become populous and great like Java. 
The precise limits of Brunt! at the beginning of the 16th century 
are not described, but as some of the early Portuguese writers men¬ 
tion the Malay kings or chiefs of Succad&na, Banjarmassing and 
sort of the navigators of the western seas of India as well as of those 
of the eastern seas from Siam, China, Choompa (Ciampa), Camboja, 
and of the many thousand islands which iic towards the east.” (Da 
Asia, Dec. 2. Part. 2, p. 4.) 
