, blood-thirsty, ungrateful and untruthful, concluded by
giving it as his opinion that they were very good fellows and in many
ways superior to white man.

I do not go quite so far as he does, but I must say that many of the
aborigines are very pleasant good-natured creatures, and have a lot of
good qualities in them, which, with care and discriminating legislation
on the part of their new rulers, might be gradually developed, while the
evil qualities which they possess in common with all races of men, might
be _pari passu_ not extinguished, but reduced to a minimum. But this
result can only be secured by officers who are naturally of a
sympathetic disposition and ready to take the trouble of studying the
natives and entering into their thoughts and aspirations.

In many instances, the Company has been fortunate in its choice of
officials, whose work has brought them into intimate connection with the
aborigines.

A besetting sin of young officers is to expect too much--they are
conscious that their only aim is to advance the best interests of the
natives, and they are surprised and hurt at, what they consider, the
want of gratitude and backwardness in seconding their efforts evinced by
them. They forget that the people are as yet in the schoolboy stage, and
should try and remember how, in their own schoolboy days, they offered
opposition to the efforts of their masters for _their_ improvement, and
how little gratitude they felt, at the time, for all that was done for
them. Patience and sympathy are the two qualifications especially
requisite in officers selected for the management of native affairs.

In addition to the indigenous population, there are, settled along the
coast and at the mouths of the principal rivers, large numbers of the
more highly civilized tribes of Malays, of whose presence in Borneo an
explanation has been attempted on a previous page. They are known as
Brunais--called by the Natives, for some unexplained reason, _orang
abai_--Sulus, Bajows, Illanuns and Balininis; there are also a few
Bugis, or natives of Celebes.

These are the people who, before the Company's arrival, lorded it over
the more ignorant interior tribes, and prevented their having direct
dealings with traders and foreigners, and to whom, consequently, the
advent of a still more civilized race than themselves was very
distasteful.

The habits of the Brunai people have already been sufficiently
described.

The Sulus are, nex