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Updated: May 23, 2025
Encumbered as were the Chinese by women and children, they found escape next to impossible, but were cut off one by one by the Dyaks, with whom in jungle warfare they had no chance whatever. At length, after days of fearful suffering, about sixty of their number contrived to reach Sambas in Dutch Borneo, this being all that remained of a force of 500 men.
"The head man of this settlement, a Chinese of Quantung, or Canton, but long resident in the vicinity of Sambas, gave me some valuable information respecting the Sarawak mountains. He had, with a considerable party of his countrymen, been employed there at the gold-mines, and he spoke of them as abundant, and of the ore as good. Tin they had not found, but thought it existed.
The Sultan of Pontiana would make it his capital if desired; his apprehensions of the power of the Sambas princes lead him to give the preference to Pontiana. The town of Calaca, belonging to the Rajah of Borneo Proper, lies north of Tanjong Datu; it is the principal port of trade south of the capital, and the mart of the Sedang country.
The ports of Pasir and Coti originally belonged to the King of Benjarmasing; very fine birds'-nests are procured here at twenty dollars the catty; much gold, tripan, wax, &c. Were Borneo to be settled, I think the principal factory ought to be at Borneo Proper; the second at Sambas; the third at Benjarmasing; the fourth at Pasir; the fifth at Tabesan or Sandakan.
There are thirty thousand Chinese in the Sambas districts, and they feel themselves strong enough to oppose or evade this tax; it hence becomes a perpetual contest between greedy extortion on the one side, and avaricious chicane on the other; there are beside about twelve thousand Malays and Dayers.
But 'divide and rule' is a good motto in my case; and the Chinese have overlooked the difference between this country and Sambas. There they have numerous rivers in the vicinity of their settlements here but one; and, the Dyak population being against them, starvation would soon reduce them to terms. The Royalist arrived about the end of March, and sailed again on the 9th April.
"The quantity of gold yearly procured at Sambas is moderately stated at 130,000 bunkals, which, reckoned at the low rate of 20 Spanish dollars a bunkal, gives 2,600,000 Spanish dollars, or upward of half a million sterling.
There is a considerable mud-flat at the mouth of the Sambas river, extending four or five miles out, but no regular bar. Vessels drawing thirteen feet may get in at high water springs; nine feet is the least water, and there is thirteen at the flood. In the offing there is a rise and fall of seven feet.
In 1803 the ship Susanna of Calcutta, Captain Drysdale, was cut off near Pontiana by the Sambas and Borneo pirates; the Europeans were all massacred, and the vessel taken. In 1769, Captain Sadler, with his boat's crew, was murdered by the Sambas pirates off Mompava, having a prodigious quantity of gold-dust: they did not succeed in cutting off the ship. In 1806, Mr.
The better class pulled down the houses, abandoned the town, and lived in boats for a month; when, alarmed by the delay and impelled by hunger, they also fled Patingi Gapoor, it was said, to Sambas; and Patingi Ali and the Tumangong among the Dyaks. After a time it was supposed they would return and receive their wives and children.
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