BERKAT. He enforced the Code
of Laws of the beloved of God and erected a mosque in Brunai,
and, moreover, ordered the Chinese population to make a stone
fort."

The connection of the Chinese with Brunai was an important event in
Borneo history and it was certainly to them that the flourishing
condition of the capital when visited by PIGAFETTA in 1521 was due. They
were the sole planters of the pepper gardens, the monopoly of the trade
in the produce of which the East India Company negotiated for in 1774,
when the crop was reported to the Company to have been 4,000 pikuls,
equal to about 240 tons, valued on the spot at 17-1/4 Spanish dollars
per pikul. The Company's Agent expressly reported that the Chinese were
the only pepper planters, that the aborigines did not plant it, and that
the produce was disposed of to Chinese junks, which visited the port and
which he trusted would, when the exclusive trade in this article was in
the hands of the Company, be diverted from Brunai to Balambangan.

The station at this latter island, as already mentioned, was abandoned
in 1775, and the English trade with Brunai appears soon afterwards to
have come to an end.

From extracts from the Journal of the Batavia Society of Arts and
Sciences published in _The British North Borneo Herald_ of the 1st
October, 1886, the first mention of Brunai in Chinese history appears to
be in the year 669, when the King of Polo, which is stated to be another
name for Bunlai (corruption of "Brunai"), sent an envoy to Pekin, who
came to Court with the envoy of Siam. Again, in the year 1406, another
Brunai envoy was appointed, who took with him a tribute of the products
of the country, and the chronicle goes on to say that it is reported
"that the present King is a man from Fukien, who followed CHENG HO when
he went to this country and who settled there."

This account was written in 1618 and alludes to the Chinese shipping
then frequenting Brunai. It is by some supposed that the northern
portion of Borneo was the destination of the unsuccessful expedition
which KUBLAI KHAN sent out in the year 1292.

Towards the close of the eighteenth century a Government seems to have
arisen in Brunai which knew not ONG SUM PING and, in 1809, Mr. HUNT
reported that Chinese junks had ceased visiting Brunai and, owing no
doubt to the rapacious and piratical character of the native Government,
the pepper gardens were gradually deserted and the Chinese left