of the East India
Company in 1819, again drew attention to Borneo, for that judiciously
selected and free port soon attracted to itself the trade of the
Celebes, Borneo and the surrounding countries, which was brought to it
by numerous fleets of small native boats. These fleets were constantly
harassed and attacked and their crews carried off into slavery by the
Balinini, Illanun, and Dyak pirates infesting the Borneo and Celebes
coasts, and the interference of the British Cruisers was urgently called
for and at length granted, and was followed, in the natural course of
events, by political intervention, resulting in the brilliant and
exciting episode whereby the modern successor of the olden heroes--Sir
James Brooke--obtained for his family, in 1840, the kingdom of Sarawak,
on the west coast of the island, which he in time purged of its two
plague spots--head-hunting on shore, and piracy and slave-dealing
afloat--and left to his heir, who has worthily taken up and carried on
his work, the unique inheritance of a settled Eastern Kingdom, inhabited
by the once dreaded head-hunting Dyaks and piratical Mahomedan Malays,
the government of whom now rests absolutely in the hands of its one
paternally despotic white ruler, or Raja. Sarawak, although not yet
formally proclaimed a British Protectorate,[2] may thus be deemed the
first permanent British possession in Borneo. Sir JAMES BROOKE was also
employed by the British Government to conclude, on 27th May, 1847, a
treaty with the Sultan of Brunai, whereby the cession to us of the small
island of Labuan, which had been occupied as a British Colony in
December, 1846, was confirmed, and the Sultan engaged that no
territorial cession of any portion of his country should ever be made to
any Foreign Power without the sanction of Great Britain.

These proceedings naturally excited some little feeling of jealousy in
our Colonial neighbours--the Dutch--who ineffectually protested against
a British subject becoming the ruler of Sarawak, as a breach of the
tenor of the treaty of London of 1824, and they took steps to define
more accurately the boundaries of their own dependencies in such other
parts of Borneo as were still open to them. What we now call British
North Borneo, they appear at that time to have regarded as outside the
sphere of their influence, recognising the Spanish claim to it through
their suzerainty, already alluded to, over the Sulu Sultan.

With this exception, and t