In the East Indian seas, by Europeans and natives alike, two names
are revered with a singleness and devotion that place them side by
side with the national heroes of all countries.
The men that bear the names are Englishmen, yet the countless islands
of the vast Malayan archipelago are populated by a hundred European,
African, and Asiatic races.
Sir Stamford Raffles founded the great city of Singapore, and Sir
James Brooke, the "White Rajah," carved out of a tropical wilderness
just across the equator, in Borneo, the kingdom of Sarawak.
There is no one man in all history with whom you may compare Rajah
Brooke. His career was the score of a hero of the footlights or of
the dime novel rather than the life of an actual history-maker in
this prosaic nineteenth century. What is true of him is also true in
a less degree of his famous nephew and successor, Sir Charles Brooke,
G. C. M. C., the present Rajah.
One morning in Singapore, as I sipped my tea and broke open one cool,
delicious mangosteen after another, I was reading in the daily Straits
Times an account of the descent of a band of head-hunting Dyaks from
the jungles of the Rejang River in Borneo on an isolated fishing
kampong, or village,--of how they killed men, women, and children,
and carried their heads back to their strongholds in triumph, and of
how, in the midst of their feasting and ceremonies, Rajah Brooke,
with a little company of fierce native soldiery, had surprised and
exterminated them to the last man; and just then the sound of heavy
cannonading in the harbor below caused me to drop my paper.
In a moment the great guns from Fort Canning answered. I
counted--seventeen--and turned inquiringly to the naked punkah-wallah,
who stood just outside in the shade of the wide veranda, listlessly
pulling the rattan rope that moved the stiff fan above me.
His brown, open palm went respectfully to his forehead.
"His Highness, the Rajah of Sarawak," he answered proudly in Malay. "He
come in gunboat Ranee to the Gymkhana races,--bring gold cup for
prizes and fast runners. Come every year, Tuan."
I had forgotten that it was the first day of the long-looked-for
Gymkhana races. A few hours later I met this remarkable man, whose
thrilling exploits had commanded my earliest boyish admiration.
The kindly old Sultan of Johore, the old rebel Sultan of Pahang,
the Sultan of Lingae, in all the finery of their native silks and
jewels, the nobles of their courts, and a dozen other dignitaries,
were on the grandstand and in the paddock as we entered, yet no
one but a modest, gray-haired little man by the side of the English
governor had any place in my thoughts. We knew his history. It was
as romantic as the wild careers of Pizarro and Cortez; as charming
as those of Robinson Crusoe and the dear old Swiss Family Robinson;
as tragic as Captain Kidd's or Morgan's; and withal, it was modelled
after our own Washington. In him I saw the full realization of every
boy's wildest dreams,--a king of a tropical island.
The bell above the judges' pavilion sounded, and a little whirlwind
of running griffins dashed by amid the yells of a thousand natives
in a dozen different tongues. The Rajah leaned out over the gayly
decorated railing with the eagerness of a boy, as he watched his own
colors in the thick of the race.
The surging mass of nakedness below caught sight of him, and another
yell rent the air, quite distinct from the first, for Malayan and
Kling, Tamil and Siamese, Dyak and Javanese, Hindu, Bugis, Burmese,
and Lascar, recognized the famous White Rajah of Borneo, the man who,
all unaided, had broken the power of the savage head-hunting Dyaks,
and driven from the seas the fierce Malayan pirates. The yell was
not a cheer. It was a tribute that a tiger might make to his tamer.
The Rajah understood. He was used to such sinister outbursts of
admiration, for he never took his eyes from the course. He was secure
on his throne now, but I could not but wonder if that yell, which sent
a strange thrill through me, did not bring up recollections of one of
the hundred sanguinary scenes through which he and his great uncle, the
elder Rajah Brooke, had gone when fighting for their lives and kingdom.
The Sultan of Johore's griffin won, and the Rajah stepped back to
congratulate him. I, too, passed over to where he stood, and the
kindly old Sultan took me by the hand.
"I have a very tender spot in my heart for all Americans," the Rajah
replied to his Highness's introduction. "It was your great republic
that first recognized the independence of Sarawak."
As we chatted over the triumph of Gladstone, the silver bill,
the tariff, and a dozen topics of the day, I was thinking of the
head-hunters of whom I had read in the morning paper. I was thinking,
too, of how this man's uncle had, years before, with a boat's crew
of English boys, carved out of an unknown island a principality
larger than the state of New York, reduced its savage population
to orderly tax-paying citizens, cleared the Borneo and Java seas
of their thousands of pirate praus, and in their place built up a
merchant fleet and a commerce of nearly five millions of dollars a
year. The younger Rajah, too, had done his share in the making of
the state. In his light tweed suit and black English derby, he did
not look the strange, impossible hero of romance I had painted him;
but there was something in his quiet, clear, well-bred English accent,
and the strong, deep lines about his eyes and mouth, that impressed
one with a consciousness of tremendous reserve force. He spoke always
slowly, as though wearied by early years of fighting and exposure in
the searching heat of the Bornean sun.
We became better acquainted later at balls and dinners, and he was
never tired of thanking me for my country's kindness.
In 1819, when the English took Malacca and the Malay peninsula from
the Dutch, they agreed to surrender all claims to the islands south
of the pirate-infested Straits of Malacca.
The Dutch, contented with the fabulously rich island of Java and its
twenty-six millions of mild-mannered natives, left the great islands
of Sumatra, Borneo, and Papua to the savage rulers and savage nations
that held them.
The son of an English clergyman, on a little schooner, with a friend or
two and a dozen sailors, sailed into these little known and dangerous
waters one day nineteen years later. His mind was filled with dreams of
an East-Indian empire; he was burning to emulate Cortez and Pizarro,
without practising their abuses. He had entered the English army and
had been so dangerously wounded while leading a charge in India after
his superiors had fallen that he had been retired on a pension before
his twenty-first year. While regaining his health, he had travelled
through India, Malaya, and China, and had written a journal of his
wanderings. During this period his ambitions were crowding him on to
an enterprise that was as foolhardy as the first voyage of Columbus.
He had spied those great tropical islands that touched the equator,
and he coveted them.
After his father's death he invested his little fortune in a schooner,
and in spite of all the protests and prayers of his family and friends,
he sailed for Singapore, and thence across to the northwest coast of
Borneo, landing at Kuching, on the Sarawak River, in 1838.
He had no clearly outlined plan of operations,--he was simply waiting
his chance. The province of Sarawak, a dependency of the Sultan of
Borneo, was governed by an old native rajah, whose authority was
menaced by the fierce, head-hunting Dyaks of the interior. Brooke's
chance had come. He boldly offered to put down the rebellion if the
Rajah would make him his general and second to the throne. The Rajah
cunningly accepted the offer, eager to let the hair-brained young
infidel annoy his foes, but with no intention of keeping his promise.
After days of marching with his little crew and a small army of
natives, through the almost impenetrable rubber jungles, after a
dozen hard-fought battles and deeds of personal heroism, any one
of which would make a story, the head-hunters were crushed and some
kind of order restored. He refused to allow the Rajah to torture the
prisoners,--thereby winning their gratitude,--and he refused to be
dismissed from his office. He had won his rank, and he appealed to
the Sultan. The wily Sultan recognized that in this stranger he had
found a man who would be able to collect his revenue, and much to
Brooke's surprise, a courier entered Kuching, the capital, one day
and summarily dismissed the native Rajah and proclaimed the young
Englishman Rajah of Sarawak.
Brooke was a king at last. His empire was before him, but he was
only king because the reigning Sultan relinquished a part of his
dominions that he was unable to control. The tasks to be accomplished
before he could make his word law were ones that England, Holland,
and the navies of Europe had shirked. His so-called subjects were
the most notorious and daring pirates in the history of the world;
they were head-hunters, they practised slavery, and they were cruel
and blood-thirsty on land and sea. Out of such elements this boy king
built his kingdom. How he did it would furnish tales that would outdo
Verne, Kingston, and Stevenson.
He abolished military marauding and every form of slavery, established
courts, missions, and school houses, and waged war, single-handed,
against head-hunting and piracy.
Head-hunting is to the Dyaks what amok is to the Malays or scalping to
the American Indians. It is even more. No Dyak woman would marry a man
who could not decorate their home with at least one human head. Often
bands of Dyaks, numbering from five to seven thousand, would sally
forth from their fortifications and cruise along the coast four or
five hundred miles, to surprise a village and carry the inhabitants'
heads back in triumph.
To-day head-hunting is practically stamped out, as is running amok
among the Malays, although cases of each occur from time to time.
As his subjects in the jungles were head-hunters, so those of the
coast were pirates. Every harbor was a pirate haven. They lived
in big towns, possessed forts and cannon, and acknowledged neither
the suzerainty of the Sultan or the domination of the Dutch. They
were stronger than the native rulers, and no European nation would
go to the great expense of life and treasure needed to break their
power. Brooke knew that his title would be but a mockery as long as
the pirates commanded the mouths of all his rivers.
With his little schooner, armed with three small guns and manned by
a crew of white companions and Dyak sailors, he gave battle first
to the weaker strongholds, gradually attaching the defeated to his
standard. He found himself at the end of nine years their master and
a king in something more than name. Combined with the qualities of
a fearless fighter, he had the faculty of winning the good will and
admiration of his foes.
The fierce Suloos and Illanums became his fast friends. He left their
chiefs in power, but punished every outbreak with a merciless hand.
One of the many incidents of his checkered career shows that his spirit
was all-powerful among them. He had invited the Chinese from Amoy to
take up their residence at his capital, Kuching. They were traders
and merchants, and soon built up a commerce. They became so numerous
in time that they believed they could seize the government. The plot
was successful, and during a night attack they overcame the Rajah's
small guard, and he escaped to the river in his pajamas without a
single follower.
Sir Charles told me one day, as we conversed on the broad veranda
of the consulate, that that night was the darkest in all his great
uncle's stormy life. The hopes and work of years were shattered at
a single blow, and he was an outcast with a price on his head.
The homeless king knelt in the bottom of the prau and prayed for
strength, and then took up the oars and pulled silently toward
the ocean. Near morning he was abreast of one of the largest Suloo
forts--the home of his bitterest and bravest foes.
He turned the head of his boat to the shore and landed unarmed and
undressed among the pirates. He surrendered his life, his throne,
and his honor, into their keeping.
They listened silently, and then their scarred old chief stepped
forward and placed a naked kris in the white man's hand and kissed
his feet.
Before the sun went down that day the White Rajah was on his throne
again, and ten thousand grim, fierce Suloos were hunting the Chinese
like a pack of bloodhounds.
In 1848 Rajah Brooke decided to visit his old home in England, and
ask his countrymen for teachers and missions. His fame had preceded
him. All England was alive to his great deeds. There were greetings by
enthusiastic crowds wherever he appeared, banquets by boards of trade,
and gifts of freedom of cities. He was lodged in Balmoral Castle,
knighted by the Queen, made Consul-General of Borneo, Governor of
Labuan, Doctor of Laws by Oxford, and was the lion of the hour.
He returned to Sarawak, accompanied by European officers and friends,
to carry on his great work of civilization, and to make of his little
tropical kingdom a recognized power.
He died in 1868, and was carried back to England for burial, and I
predict that at no distant day a grateful people will rise up and
ask of England his body, that it may be laid to rest in the yellow
sands under the graceful palms of the unknown nation of which he was
the Washington.
His nephew, Sir Charles Brooke, who had also been his faithful
companion for many years, succeeded him.
Sarawak has to-day a coast-line of over four hundred miles, with an
area of fifty thousand square miles, and a population of three hundred
thousand souls. The country produces gold, silver, diamonds, antimony,
quicksilver, coal, gutta-percha, rubber, canes, rattan, camphor,
beeswax, edible bird's-nests, sago, tapioca, pepper, and tobacco, all
of which find their way to Singapore, and thence to Europe and America.
The Rajah is absolute head of the state; but he is advised by
a legislative council composed of two Europeans and five native
chiefs. He has a navy of a number of small but effective gunboats,
and a well-trained and officered army of several hundred men, who look
after the wild tribes of the interior of Borneo and guard the great
coast-line from piratical excursions; otherwise they would be useless,
as his rule is almost fatherly, and he is dearly beloved by his people.
It is impossible in one short sketch to relate a tenth of the daring
deeds and startling adventures of these two white rajahs. Their lives
have been written in two bulky volumes, and the American boy who loves
stories that rival his favorite authors of adventure will find them by
going to the library and asking for the "Life of the Rajah of Sarawak."
There is much in this "Life" that might be read by our statesmen
and philanthropists with profit; for the building of a kingdom in a
jungle of savage men and savage beasts places the name of Brooke of
Borneo among those of the world's great men, as it does among those
of the heroes of adventure.
One evening we were pacing back and forth on the deck of the Rajah's
magnificent gunboat, the Ranee. A soft tropical breeze was blowing off
shore. Thousands of lights from running rickshas and bullock carts
were dancing along the wide esplanade that separates the city of
Singapore from the sea. The strange old-world cries from the natives
came out to us in a babel of sound.
Chinese in sampans and Malays in praus were gliding about our bows and
back and forth between the great foreign men-of-war that overshadowed
us. The Orient was on every hand, and I looked wonderingly at the
slightly built, gray-haired man at my side, with a feeling that he
had stepped from out some wild South Sea tale.
"Your Highness," I said, as we chatted, "tell me how you made subjects
out of pirates and head-hunters, when our great nation, with all its
power and gold, has only been able after one hundred years to make
paupers out of our Indians."
"Do you see that man?" he replied, pointing to a stalwart, brown-faced
Dyak, who in the blue and gold uniform of Sarawak was leaning idly
against the bulwarks. "That is the Dato (Lord) Imaum, Judge of the
Supreme Court of Sarawak. He was one of the most redoubtable of
the Suloo pirates. My uncle fought him for eight years. In all that
time he never broke his word in battle or in truce. When Sir James
was driven from his throne by the Chinese, the Dato Imaum fought to
reinstate him as his master.
"Civilization is only skin deep, and so is barbarism. Had your country
never broken its word and been as just as it is powerful, your red
men would have been to-day where our brown men are--our equals."
An hour later I stepped into my launch, which was lying alongside. The
American flag at the peak came down, and the guns of the Ranee belched
forth the consular salute.
I instinctively raised my hat as we glided over the phosphorescent
waters of the harbor, for in my thoughts I was still in the presence
of one of the great ones of the earth.