nt from anything I was at all prepared to meet, and devoid
of the vices with which their countrymen are usually stigmatized by
modern writers. I expected to find an indolent and somewhat insolent
people, devoted to sensual enjoyments, addicted to smoking opium, and
eternally cock-fighting or gambling: let me speak it to the honor of
the Borneons, that they neither cock-fight nor smoke opium; and in the
military train of their rajah they find at Kuching few conveniences
and fewer luxuries. Like all the followers of Islam, they sanction
polygamy; and the number of their women, and, probably, the ease and
cheerfulness of the seraglio, contrasted with the ceremonial of the
exterior, induce them to pass a number of their hours amid their women,
and excite habits of effeminacy and indolence. I should pronounce
them indolent and unwarlike; but kind and unreserved to foreigners,
particularly to Englishmen. They are volatile, generally speaking very
ignorant, but by no means deficient in acuteness of understanding;
and, indeed, their chief defects may be traced entirely to their
total want of education, and the nature of their government. The
lower orders of people are poor and wretched, and the freemen are
certainly poorer and more wretched than the slaves. They are not
greatly addicted to theft, and yet, unlike the scrupulous honesty
of the Sibnowans, they pilfered some trifling articles occasionally
when left in their way. The retainers of the court showed much the
same mean intriguing spirit which is too often found in courts,
and always in Eastern ones; and the rajah himself seldom requested
any favor from me directly, but employed some intermediate person
to sound me--to get whatever was required for himself if possible,
if not for the rajah. I took the hint, and always expressed my
wishes through the interpreter when not present myself. In this way
we were enabled to grant or refuse without the chance of insult or
offence. The suite of the rajah consists principally of slaves, either
purchased or debtors: they are well treated, and rise to offices of
some note. The Panglima rajah was a slave-debtor, though we did not
know it for some time after our arrival. I never saw either cruelty
or undue harshness exercised by the great men during my stay, and in
general their manners were affable and kind to those about them. The
Rajah Muda Hassim is a remarkably short man, and slightly built;
about 45 years of age; active and intell