THE COURT-HOUSE.
While Sir James Brooke was in England, in 1847, he asked his friends to
help him in his efforts to civilize the Dyaks, by sending a mission to
live at Sarawak.
Lord Ellesmere, Admiral Sir H. Keppel, Admiral C. D. Bethune, Canon Ryle
Wood, and the Rev. C. Brereton, formed themselves into a committee, with
the Rev. I. F. Stocks for their honorary secretary, and soon collected
funds for the purpose. The Rev. F. McDougall was chosen as the head of
the mission, and with him were associated the Rev. S. Montgomery and the
Rev. W. Wright; but Mr. Montgomery died very suddenly, of fever caught
when ministering to the poor of his parish, before the time came for us
to embark, so the party was reduced to two clergymen and their wives,
two babies and two nurses. We sailed from London in the barque _Mary
Louisa_, four hundred tons, the end of December; Mr. Parr, a nephew of
Mrs. Wright's, being also one of the passengers. I had all my life loved
the sea, and longed to take such a voyage as should carry us out of
sight of land, and give us all the experiences which wait on those "who
go down to the sea in ships;" but I little thought how we should all
long for land before we saw it again.
The barque was a poor sailer; we thought it a good run if she made eight
knots an hour, so no wonder we did not reach Singapore till May 23,
1848. It was a long monotonous voyage, but we were well occupied, and I
do not remember ever finding it dull. The sea was all I ever fancied by
way of a companion, and, like all one's best friends, made me happy or
unhappy, but was never stupid. Then we had to learn Malay and its Arabic
characters, with the help of Marsden's grammar and dictionary, and the
Bible translated into that language by the Dutch. We lived by rule,
apportioning the hours to certain duties, and every one knows how fast
time passes under those conditions. The two clergymen busied themselves
with teaching the sailors, and several of them presented themselves at
Holy Communion in consequence, the last Sunday before we landed. The
most trying time we passed was on the coast of Java, becalmed under a
broiling sun, the very sea dead and slimy with all sorts of creatures
creeping over it. As for ourselves, we were gasping with thirst, for we
had already been on short rations of water for six weeks, one of the
tanks having leaked out. One quart of water a day for each adult, and
none for the babies, so of course they had the lion's share of their
parents' allowance. Our one cup of tea in the evening was looked forward
to for hours; and what a wonderful colour it was, after all!--but that
was the iron of the tank.
On the 23rd of May we landed at Singapore, and had to wait there for
four weeks before the schooner _Julia_, then running between that place
and Sarawak, came to fetch us. We reached Sarawak June 29th, entering
the Morotabas mouth of the river, which is twenty-four miles from the
town of Kuching, whither we were bound. The sail up the river, our first
sight of the country and the people, was indeed exciting, and filled us
with delight. The river winds continually, and every new reach had its
interest: a village of palm-leaf houses built close to the water, women
and children standing on the steps with their long bamboo jars, or
peeping out of the slits of windows at the schooner; boats of all sizes
near the houses, fishing-nets hanging up to dry, wicked alligators lying
basking on the mud; trees of many varieties--the nibong palm which
furnishes the posts of the houses, the nipa which makes their mat walls,
and close by the water the light and graceful mangroves, which at night
are all alive and glittering with fire-flies. On the boughs of some
larger trees hanging over the stream parties of monkeys might be seen
eating the fruits, chattering, jumping, flying almost, from bough to
bough. We afterwards made nearer acquaintance with these droll
creatures.
At last we reached the Fort, a long white building manned by Malays, and
with cannon showing at the port-holes. The _Julia_ was not challenged,
however, but gladly welcomed, as she carried not only the missionaries
but the mail, and stores for the bazaar; for at that time there were not
many native trading-vessels--the fear of pirates was great, and there
was good reason to fear!
The town of Kuching consisted in those days of a Chinese bazaar and a
Kling bazaar, both very small, and where it was scarcely possible to
find anything an English man or woman could buy. Beyond was the court of
justice, the mosques, and a few native houses. Higher up the river lay
the Malay town, divided into Kampongs, or clusters of houses belonging
to the different chiefs or principal merchants of the place. Opposite
the bazaar, on the other side of the river, stood the rajah's bungalow,
as well as two or three others belonging to Europeans, embosomed in
trees, cocoa-nuts and betel-nut palms, and other fruit-trees. Behind the
rajah's house rose the beautiful mountain of Santubong, wooded to its
summit nearly 3000 feet, with a rock cropping out here and there. At
this bungalow we landed, and were hospitably entertained for a few days
until the upper part of the court-house could be made ready for our
party.
Shall I ever forget my first impressions of the rajah's bungalow? A
peculiar scent pervaded it. You looked about for the cause till your
eyes fell on two saucers, one filled with green blossoms, the other
with deep golden ones, much the same shape--the kenanga and the
chimpaka, flowering trees, which grew near the house. Their flowers were
picked every day for the rooms, as the rajah loved the scent, and so did
the Malays. The ladies steeped the blossoms in cocoa-nut oil and
anointed themselves, placing them also in their long black hair, with
wreaths of jessamine flowers threaded on a string. These perfumes were
rather overpowering at first, but I learnt to like them after I had been
some time in Sarawak. The large, bare, cool rooms were very refreshing
after the little cabins of the _Julia_. And then the library! a treasure
indeed in the jungle; books on all sorts of subjects, bound in enticing
covers, always inviting you to bodily repose and mental activity or
amusement, as you might prefer. This library, so dear to us all because
we were all allowed to share it, was burnt in 1857 by the Chinese
rebels. It took two days to burn. I watched it from our library over the
water, and saw the mass of books glowing dull red like a furnace, long
after the flames had consumed the wooden house. It made one's heart ache
to see it. An old gentleman of our English society watched it too, and I
wondered why his head shook continually as he sat with his eyes fixed on
those sad ruins; but I found afterwards that the sight, and doubtless
its cause, had palsied him from that day. But I must not linger too long
in the rajah's bungalow, though the white pigeons seem to call to me
from the verandahs; we must take boat again (for there are no bridges
over the Sarawak river), and cross to the court-house.
This square wooden house, with latticed verandahs like a big cage, was
built by a German missionary, who purposed having a school on the ground
floor and living in the upper story; but as soon as he had built his
house he was recalled to Germany, and the only trace of him that
remained was a box full of torn Bibles and tracts, which, I am sorry to
say, had been used as waste paper in the bazaar for tying up parcels
since he left, but as the tracts were not in any language the people
could understand they were scarcely to blame. Rajah turned the house
into a court of justice, and we settled ourselves in the upper rooms,
which were divided from one another by mat walls. The river flowed under
this house at spring tides, and then nests of ants would swarm into it:
the rapidity with which these little creatures would carry all their
eggs up the posts and settle the whole family under a box in your
bedroom was marvellous; but as they were not pleasant companions there,
a kettle of hot water had to put an end to the colony.
These little black ants did not sting, but there was a large red ant,
half an inch long, who was most pugnacious; he stood up on his hind legs
and fought you with amazing courage, and his jaws were formidable. We
made our first acquaintance with white ants while we lived in the
court-house. On unpacking a box of books, which had been our solace
during the voyage, we found them almost glued together by the secretion
of these creatures. The box had been standing on the ground floor of the
hotel. The white ants had eaten through and through the books, and
picked all the surface off the bindings; they were disgusting to look at
and to smell. Some years afterwards, one of our missionaries had a box
of clothes sent her from Singapore. It was necessary clothing, for she
had lost her effects, like the rest of us, during the Chinese rebellion.
I warned Miss Coomes that she must unpack the box directly, on account
of the white ants; but she put it off till the next day, and at night
these wretches ate through the bottom of the box, and munched up the new
linen and stockings. We soon learnt to guard against their attacks by
using no wood except balean, or iron-wood, which is too hard for them to
bite. English oak seemed like a slice of cake to white ants.
No sooner were we settled at the court-house, than we had visits from
all the principal Malays, and also some Dyaks who happened to be at
Sarawak. My husband opened a dispensary in a little room behind the
store-room, and had plenty of patients. I used to hear continual talking
and laughing going on there, and by this means Mr. McDougall learnt to
talk the Malay language, which he only knew from books when he first
arrived. The pure Malay of books is very different from the colloquial
_patois_ of Kuching. To my sorrow, I learnt this some time after, when I
was trying to prepare two women for baptism: they listened to me for
some time, and then one said to the other, "She talks like a book,"
which I fear meant that they only half understood me.
Soon after this we took four little half-caste children to bring up.
They were running about in the bazaar, and their native mothers were
willing to part with them; so Mary, Julia, Peter, and Tommy were housed
in a cottage close by, under the care of a Portuguese Christian woman,
the wife of our cook. Every day I used to spend some hours with them,
that we might become friends. The eldest of these children was only six
years old, Tommy, the youngest, but two and a half; so they wanted a
nurse. They were baptized on Advent Sunday, 1848, and were the beginning
of our native school.