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These heads had been taken in the late Sakarron business, and were therefore but a fortnight old. They were encased in a wide net work of rattan, and were ornamented with beads. Their stench was intolerable, although, as we discovered upon after examination, when they were suspended against the wall, they had been partially baked and were quite black.
Their hair, which is fine and black, generally falls down behind. Their feet are bare. Like the American squaws, they do all the drudgery, carry the water, and paddle the canoes. They generally fled at our approach, if we came unexpectedly. The best looking I ever saw was one we captured on the river Sakarron.
The occasion soon presented itself. Seven of the Kuchin Malays, having ventured in a canoe up the Sakarron river, were all murdered, and their heads cut off, and kept, as usual, as trophies; and the intelligence of this outrage communicated by them to Mr. Brooke, with defiance. Captain Keppell, of the Dido, had just arrived at Sarawak when this news was brought to Mr. Brooke.
The cause of this new expedition was the intelligence that the Arab chief, Serib Saib, who had escaped during the late conflict, had returned to the Sakarron to collect together and re-organize his piratical subjects. We soon arrived at the same spot which we had before visited when the town had been burnt down; but the expedition proved to be one of little interest.
We next went over the naval arsenal, for being then at peace with every body, their prahus were hauled up under cover of sheds. One of them was a fine boat, about forty feet long, mounting a gun, and capable of containing forty or fifty men. She was very gaily decorated with paint and feathers, and had done good service on the Sakarron river in a late war.
The river Sakarron, with its tributaries, the Linga and Serebis, have been for a long while in the possession of a proverbial piratical tribe of Malays, governed by chiefs, who are of Arab descent, and much better acquainted with the art of war than those lawless communions are in general.
We were informed that the river Sakarron was again our destination; and at four o'clock in the morning we started, with fourteen days' provisions, and armed to the teeth, to join the Dido's boats at the mouth of the river Morotabis, from thence to be towed with them by the steamer to our destination.
Soon after our return from the Sakarron the expedition to Loondoo was arranged, and we started in the barge and gig, accompanied by Captain Keppell in his own boat, and Mr. Brooke and Hentig in one of the native boats, called a Tam-bang.
On the change of the tide we started for the Sakarron, with the hope of gaining the Dido's boats, and rendering them some assistance. Our men exerted themselves to the utmost; but it requires time to pull eighty miles; and I will therefore, en voyage, explain more fully the cause and the object of the expedition.
We also found that Kuchin was at present nearly deserted, as the Dido's boats, with the Phlegethon steamer, and all the native war prahus which could be mustered, had proceeded with Mr. Brooke to the Sakarron, a neighbouring river, to punish some of the mixed tribes who had lately been detected in an act of flagrant piracy.
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