President of the Republic. A little
further on are the palaces, shops and houses of the city of Brunai, all,
with the exception of a few brick shops belonging to Chinamen, built
over the water in a reach where the river broadens out, and a vessel can
steam up the High Street and anchor abreast of the Royal Palace. When
PIGAFETTA visited the port in 1521, he estimated the number of houses at
25,000, which, at the low average of six to a house, would give Brunai a
population of 150,000 people, many of whom were Chinese, cultivating
pepper gardens, traces of which can still be seen on the now deserted
hills. Sir SPENCER ST. JOHN, formerly H. B. M. Consul-General in Borneo,
and who put the population at 25,000 at the lowest in 1863, asserts that
fifteen is a fair average to assign to a Brunai house, which would make
the population in PIGAFETTA'S time 375,000. From his enquiries he found
that the highest number was seventy, in the Sultan's palace, and the
lowest seven, in a fisherman's small hut. PIGAFETTA, however, probably
alluded to families, _fires_ I think is the word he makes use of, and
more than one family is often found occupying a Brunai house. The
present population perhaps does not number more than 12,000 or 15,000
natives, and about eighty Chinese and a few Kling shop-keepers, as
natives of India are here styled. Writing in 1845, Sir JAMES BROOKE,
then the Queen's first Commissioner to Brunai, says with reference to
this Sultanate:--"Here the experiment may be fairly tried, on the
smallest possible scale of expense, whether a beneficial European
influence may not re-animate a falling State and at the same time
extend our commerce. * * * If this tendency to decay and extinction
be inevitable, if this approximation of European policy to native
Government should be unable to arrest the fall of the Bornean dynasty,
yet we shall retrieve a people already habituated to European habits and
manners, industrious interior races; and if it become necessary, a
Colony gradually formed and ready to our hand in a rich and fertile
country," and elsewhere he admits that the regeneration of the Borneo
Malays through themselves was a hobby of his. The experiment has been
tried and, so far as concerns the re-animation of the Malay Government
of Brunai, the verdict must be "a complete failure." The English are a
practical race, and self-interest is the guide of nations in their
intercourse with one another; it was not to be supposed