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As regards the time when European influence appeared in Borneo, the small sultanate of Brunei in the north was the first to come in contact with Europeans. Pigafetta, with the survivors of Magellan's expedition, arrived here from the Moluccas in 1521, and was the first to give an account of it to the Western world.
Sarawak was ceded by the Sultan of Brunei, under whose suzerainty it originally was, to the late Raja Sir James Brooke; and a short history of the country from the time in which it first came into possession of the Brooke family may be of some interest to the reader. The capital was then but a small straggling Malay village, consisting of a few nipa-palm houses.
Imbedded in the northern coast of the island, like a row of semi-precious stones set in a barbaric brooch, are the states of British North Borneo, Brunei, and Sarawak. Their back-doors open on the wilderness of mountain, forest and jungle which marks the northern boundary of Dutch Borneo; their front windows look out upon the Sulu and the China Seas.
The rest is all claimed by the Dutch, excepting one small State, Brunei, between North Borneo and Sarawak, which is governed by a Malay Sultan, who is a Mahommedan.
None of the larger carnivora such as lion, tiger, &c. have as yet been found in Borneo, but wild cattle and a small species of elephant are said to exist on the large grass plains around Brunei in North Borneo, the only part of the island entirely free from jungle.
Its history is involved in the life of Sir James Brooke, who was originally created the rajah, or governor of the country, by the Sultan of Bruneï, and retained the title till his death in 1868. He was born in Benares in 1803, and educated at Norwich, England. In 1819 he entered the East Indian army, and was severely wounded in the Burmese war.
Of these three territories, the first is under the jurisdiction of the British North Borneo Company, a private corporation, which administers it under the terms of a royal charter. The second is ruled by the Sultan of Brunei, whose once vast dominions have steadily dwindled through cession and conquest until they are now no larger than Connecticut.
But the most famous jar in Borneo is that of the Sultan of Brunei, which not only possesses all the valuable properties of the other jars but can also speak. St.
Also there was a considerable trade in cotton, silk, and the like, carried on by the Chinese and the Brunei Moro. The weaving industry seems to have reached its height in the Ilocos provinces, where the processes of ginning, carding, spinning, and weaving were, for the most part, identical with those found in Borneo, Java, the Malay Peninsula, Burma, and a large part of India.
Of the other races inhabiting Sarawak, and especially the Rejang district, may be mentioned the Kayans, a powerful tribe living at the head of the Rejang river, and occupying the vast tract of land between it and the territory of the Sultan of Brunei in North Borneo; the Kanowits, who take their name from the stream of that name, which rises in the Batang Lupar Residency, and runs into the Rejang; and the Poonans, Pakatans, Sians, and Ukits, the latter of whom are acknowledged to be the wildest of the human race yet met with in Borneo.
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