Brooke was born at Benares on April 29, 1803, and was the son of Thomas Brooke of the East India Company's Civil Service. He entered the Company's army in 1819, and took part in the first Burmese war, in which he was severely wounded, and from which he was invalided home in 1825. He had been honourably mentioned in despatches for conspicuous services rendered in having raised a much needed body of horse, and for bravery. Then he resigned his commission, and visited China, Penang, Malacca, and Singapore. There he heard much of the beauty and the wonders of the fairy group of islands forming the Eastern Archipelago, and of the dangers to be encountered there from Malay pirates; islands rich in all that nature could lavish in flower and fruit, in bird and gorgeous butterfly, in diamond and pearl, but "the trail of the serpent was over them all." Very little was known of these islands, few English vessels visited them, the trade was monopolised by the Dutch, who sought to exclude all European nations from obtaining a foothold. They claimed thousands of islands from Sumatra to Papua as within their exclusive sphere of influence, islands abounding in natural products which they exploited imperfectly, and did nothing to develop. This was a dog-in-the-manger policy to which Great Britain submitted.
The young man's ambition was fired; he longed to explore these seas, to study the natural history, the ethnology, to discover gaps in the Dutch imaginary line through which English commerce might penetrate and then expand.
Mr. Brooke made a second voyage to the East in a brig which, in partnership with another, he had purchased and freighted for China; but this venture proved a failure, and the brig and cargo were sold in China at a loss.
In 1835, Mr. Thomas Brooke died, leaving to his son the sum of £30,000. James now saw that a chance was open to him of realising his youthful dream, and he bought a yacht, the Royalist, a schooner of 142 tons burden, armed with six-pounders and several swivels, and, after a preliminary cruise in the Mediterranean to train his crew, he sailed in December 1838, flying the flag of the Royal Yacht Squadron, for that enchanted group of islands—
Those islands of the sea
Where Nature rises to Fame's highest round.[78]
And as he wrote, to cast himself on the waters, like Southey's little book; but whether the world would know him after many days, was a question which, hoping the best, he could not answer with any degree of assurance.
He arrived in Singapore in May, 1839. The Rajah Muda Hasim of Sarawak had recently shown kind treatment to some English shipwrecked sailors, and Mr. Brooke was commissioned by the Governor and the Singapore Chamber of Commerce to convey letters of thanks and presents to the Rajah Muda in acknowledgment of his humanity, exceptional in those days, and a marked contrast to the treatment afforded to the crew and passengers of the Sultana a little later by his sovereign, the Sultan of Bruni, which is recorded further on.[79] This chance diverted Mr. Brooke from his original project of going to Marudu Bay, the place he had indicated as being the best adapted for the establishment of a British settlement, and took him to the field of his life-long labours.
"ROYALIST" OFF SANTUBONG.
He left Singapore on July 27, 1839, full of hope and confidence that something was to be done, and reaching the West Coast of Borneo surveyed some seventy miles of that coast before entering the Sarawak river, which was not then marked on the charts; for of Borneo at that time very little was known; its interior was a blank upon the maps, and its coast was set down by guess work on the Admiralty charts; so much so, that Mr. Brooke found Cape Datu placed some seventy to eighty miles too far to the east and north, and he was "obliged to clip some hundreds of miles of habitable land off the charts."
Kuching,[80] the capital of Sarawak, is so called from a small stream that runs through the town into the main river, that a few miles below expands and forms a delta of many channels and mouths. The town, which is seated some twenty miles from the open sea, was founded by Pangiran Makota, when Bruni rule was established in Sarawak, and he was sent down as the Sultan's representative a few years previously to the arrival of Mr. Brooke. At this time the population, with the exception of a few Chinese traders and other eastern foreigners, consisted entirely of Bruni Malays to the number of about 800. The Sarawak Malays lived at Katupong,[81] a little higher up, and farther up again at Leda Tanah, under their head chief, the brave Datu Patinggi Ali.
A distinction must be made, which it will be as well to again note here, between the Malays of Bruni and those of Sarawak, in other works described—the former as Borneans, and the latter as Siniawans. They are very different in appearance, manners, and even in language. There are not many Brunis in Sarawak now. Most returned to their own country with Rajah Muda Hasim when he retired there in 1844, and others drifted thither later. All the Malays in Kuching, except a sprinkling of foreigners, are Sarawak Malays, the descendants of the so-called Siniawans.
The bay that lies between Capes Datu and Sipang is indeed a lovely one. To the right lies the splendid range of Poé, over-topping the lower, but equally beautiful, Gading hills; then the fantastic-shaped mountains of the interior; while to the left the range of Santubong end-on towards you looks like a solitary peak, rising as an island from the sea, as Teneriffe once appeared to me sailing by in the Mæander. From these hills flow many streams which add to the beauty of the view. But the gems of the scene are the little emerald isles that are scattered over the surface of the bay, presenting their pretty beaches of glittering sand, or their lovely foliage drooping to kiss the rippling waves. There is no prettier spot (than the mouth of the Sarawak river); on the right bank rises the splendid peak of Santubong, over 2000 feet in height,[82] clothed from its summit to its base with noble vegetation, its magnificent buttresses covered with lofty trees, showing over a hundred feet of stem without a branch, and at its base a broad beach of white sand fringed by graceful casuarinas, waving and trembling under the influence of the faintest breeze, and at that time thronged by wild hogs.[83]
On August 15, the Royalist cast anchor off the capital, and Mr. Brooke had an interview with the Rajah Muda, presented the letters and gifts, and was very graciously received. He was allowed to make excursions to Lundu, Samarahan, and Sadong, large rivers hitherto unknown to Europeans, and he added some seventy miles to his survey of the coast; but as the Malays and most of the Dayak tribes were in insurrection in the interior, travelling there was unsafe.
The Rajah Muda Hasim, the Bandahara of Bruni and the heir-presumptive to the throne, was a plain, middle-aged man, with gracious and courtly manners, amiable and well disposed, but weak and indolent. He was placed in a difficult position, which he had not the energy or the ability to fill. The Sultan of Bruni had confided the district of Sarawak some years previously to the Pangiran Makota as governor, a man utterly unprincipled, grasping, selfish, cruel, and cowardly, but "the most mild, the most gentlemanly rascal you can conceive";[84] and by his exactions and by forced labour at the antimony mines, he had driven the Sarawak Malays, as well as the Land-Dayaks, into open revolt. They proclaimed their independence of Bruni, and asserted that submission to the Sultan had been voluntary on their part, and on stipulated conditions that had not been carried out. For three years they had carried on their struggle against the Bruni tyrants, but, though far from being reduced, it became evident to them that unaided they could not attain their freedom. Surrender meant death to the chiefs and abject slavery to the people, and to their womankind something far worse than either, so in their extremity they appealed to the Dutch. A year before Mr. Brooke's arrival they had invited the Dutch to plant the Netherlands flag in their camp, and afterwards had sent an emissary to Batavia to beg the assistance of the Governor-General, but open assistance was refused, though the Sultan of Sambas appears to have constantly supplied the rebels with ammunition and provisions. As Mr. Brooke had warned the Pangiran Makota, who had reason to fear Dutch aggression, the danger was not an open violation of their independence, but their coming on friendly terms—they might make war after having first gained a footing, not before. The Dutch had made great efforts to establish trade with Sarawak, in other words, to monopolise it, and
