The White Rajah Of Borneo
by
The Founding of Sarawak
In the East Indian seas, by Europeans and natives alike, two names are revered with a singleness and devotion that place them side by side with the national heroes of all countries.
The men that bear the names are Englishmen, yet the countless islands of the vast Malayan archipelago are populated by a hundred European, African, and Asiatic races.
Sir Stamford Raffles founded the great city of Singapore, and Sir James Brooke, the “White Rajah,” carved out of a tropical wilderness just across the equator, in Borneo, the kingdom of Sarawak.
There is no one man in all history with whom you may compare Rajah Brooke. His career was the score of a hero of the footlights or of the dime novel rather than the life of an actual history-maker in this prosaic nineteenth century. What is true of him is also true in a less degree of his famous nephew and successor, Sir Charles Brooke, G. C. M. C., the present Rajah.
One morning in Singapore, as I sipped my tea and broke open one cool, delicious mangosteen after another, I was reading in the daily Straits Times an account of the descent of a band of head-hunting Dyaks from the jungles of the Rejang River in Borneo on an isolated fishing kampong, or village,–of how they killed men, women, and children, and carried their heads back to their strongholds in triumph, and of how, in the midst of their feasting and ceremonies, Rajah Brooke, with a little company of fierce native soldiery, had surprised and exterminated them to the last man; and just then the sound of heavy cannonading in the harbor below caused me to drop my paper.
In a moment the great guns from Fort Canning answered. I counted–seventeen–and turned inquiringly to the naked punkah-wallah, who stood just outside in the shade of the wide veranda, listlessly pulling the rattan rope that moved the stiff fan above me.
His brown, open palm went respectfully to his forehead.
“His Highness, the Rajah of Sarawak,” he answered proudly in Malay. “He come in gunboat Ranee to the Gymkhana races,–bring gold cup for prizes and fast runners. Come every year, Tuan.”
I had forgotten that it was the first day of the long-looked-for Gymkhana races. A few hours later I met this remarkable man, whose thrilling exploits had commanded my earliest boyish admiration.
The kindly old Sultan of Johore, the old rebel Sultan of Pahang, the Sultan of Lingae, in all the finery of their native silks and jewels, the nobles of their courts, and a dozen other dignitaries, were on the grandstand and in the paddock as we entered, yet no one but a modest, gray-haired little man by the side of the English governor had any place in my thoughts. We knew his history. It was as romantic as the wild careers of Pizarro and Cortez; as charming as those of Robinson Crusoe and the dear old Swiss Family Robinson; as tragic as Captain Kidd’s or Morgan’s; and withal, it was modelled after our own Washington. In him I saw the full realization of every boy’s wildest dreams,–a king of a tropical island.
The bell above the judges’ pavilion sounded, and a little whirlwind of running griffins dashed by amid the yells of a thousand natives in a dozen different tongues. The Rajah leaned out over the gayly decorated railing with the eagerness of a boy, as he watched his own colors in the thick of the race.
The surging mass of nakedness below caught sight of him, and another yell rent the air, quite distinct from the first, for Malayan and Kling, Tamil and Siamese, Dyak and Javanese, Hindu, Bugis, Burmese, and Lascar, recognized the famous White Rajah of Borneo, the man who, all unaided, had broken the power of the savage head-hunting Dyaks, and driven from the seas the fierce Malayan pirates. The yell was not a cheer. It was a tribute that a tiger might make to his tamer.