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Updated: May 29, 2025
The rajah supplies the whole force with rice for the expedition, and a certain number of muskets. The English ships were left, the Albatross at Sarawak, and the Royalist to guard the entrance of the Batang Lupar River, into which the Sakarran and Sarebas Rivers débouche; but their boats, and nearly all the officers, accompanied the fleet, and the steamer Nemesis went also.
As my largest male was 13 1/2 broad across the face, measured as soon as the animal was killed, I can quite understand that when the head arrived at Sarawak from the Batang Lupar, after two or three days' voyage, it was so swollen by decomposition as to measure an inch more than when it was fresh.
The Lundu Dyak chief was a great friend and admirer of Sir James Brooke from his first arrival in the country. He and his tribe were the determined enemies of the pirates, and with the Balows of the Batang Lupar braved the Sarebas and Sakarrans, even when they were most powerful.
The branch to the left is called the Sakarran; that to the right retains the name of Lupar, inhabited chiefly by Sakarrans. We found the place deserted and the houses empty.
They had taught the Sea Dayaks of the Batang Lupar and neighbouring rivers to join them in their piratical excursions, and, being to some extent dependent upon their aid, were compelled to treat them with some consideration; but all other communities were treated by them with a rapacity and cruelty which was causing a rapid depopulation and the return to jungle of much cultivated land.
I forgot to mention that all the adjoining seriffs had, in the greatest consternation, sent me assurances of their future good intentions. Seriff Jaffer, who lived with an industrious but warlike race of Dyaks up the Linga river, a branch of the Batang Lupar, had never been known to commit piracy, and had been frequently at war with both the Sarebus and Sakarrans, offered to join our expedition.
Of all these six peoples the Sea Dayaks have become best known to Europeans, largely owing to their restless truculent disposition, and to the fact that they are more numerous in Sarawak than any of the others. They have spread northwards over Sarawak during the latter half of the last century, chiefly from the region of the Batang Lupar, where they are still numerous.
Some two centuries ago, a number of Malay nobles were authorised by the Sultan of Bruni to govern the five rivers of Sarawak proper, namely, the Samarahan, the Sadong, the Batang Lupar, the Saribas, and the Klaka rivers.
There are fifty miles of sea to cross from the Sarawak River to the Batang Lupar, then a long pull from the fort at Linga up to Banting. The journey took three nights and two days. The mission-house at Banting is most romantically placed on the crest of a hill overhanging the river about three hundred feet, and stands in a grove of beautiful fruit-trees. The view from it is enchanting.
D'Aeth, up the Lupar; while Lieutenant Wade, accompanied by Mr. Brooke, ascended the Sakarran.
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