like inhabitants of another planet, by appeals to those feelings and principles which form the basis of our nature every where; and lights up, like a new Prometheus, in the hearts of Savages the common fire of humanity. He founds a little state, enacts laws, conquers neighboring chiefs, estab

of Carpentaria;-a survey of which, it is draws to him the hearts of races of men so supposed, would solve the great geograph-outwardly different from ourselves as to seem ical question respecting the rivers of the mimic continent. Place your finger on Japan, with its exclusive but civilized people: it lies an unknown lump on our earth, and an undefined line on our charts. Think of the northern coast of China, willing, as is reported, to open an intercourse and trade with Europeans, spite of their arbitrary gov-lishes an asylum for the oppressed; becomes ernment. Stretch your pencil over the Pacific Ocean, which Cook himself declares a field of discovery for ages to come! Proceed to the coast of South America, from the region of gold dust to the region of furs; -the land ravaged by the cruel Spaniard, and the no less cruel Bucanier; the scene of the adventures of Drake, and the descriptions of Dampier. The places I have enumerated are mere names, with no specific ideas attached to them; lands and seas where the boldest navigators gained a reputation, and where hundreds may yet do so, if they have the same courage and the same perseverance. Imagination whispers to ambition, that there are yet lands unknown which might be discovered. Teil me, would not a man's life be well spent--tell me, would it not be well sacrificed--in an en-six years of most successful endeavors, it deavor to explore these regions? When I think on dangers and death, I think of them only because they would remove me from such a field for ambition, for energy, and for knowledge.'

famed, courted and feared, over a considerable district of this great Island;—all by the force of a resolute will and clear head, and an armed power consisting of a yacht's crew and 'six six-pounders!' Yet his narrative exhibits no consciousness of having done great things, but rather that perpetual craving after more extensive success, and a wider field of action, which has so strongly characterized the most distinguished missionaries of humanity :-most of whom, like those of religion, have never sought or found rest on this side of the grave. The greater his success in rescuing some portion of his fellow creatures from their miserable lot, the greater is his impatience of all the remaining iniquity which is done under the sun. As his Journal commences, so, after

ends, with longings after greater things to be accomplished-'Oh, for power to pursue the course pointed out!'

We have spoken of Mr. Brooke and his great and humane undertakings somewhat abruptly, and as if presuming that they were already familiar to our readers; and, in fact, so general is the interest which Captain Keppel's work has excited, that we suspect there are few now to whom his name at least, and that of his Settlement, have not become known. To those, however, who have not acquired this knowledge, a few prefatory explanations may be acceptable.

We have inserted these striking sentences of Mr. Brooke's Journal without introduction, because, in truth, they serve by themselves as the best of introductions to the narrative of his undertakings, and furnish the best key to the character of the writer. He affords a fresh exemplification of the truth, that great things are rarely accomplished in new and strange fields, except by men with a strong tendency to romance in Mr. Brooke is the son of a gentleman in their composition. His powerful imagina- the East India Company's civil employtion first opened the road which he has fol- ment, and commenced life as a Cadet in lowed with eminently practical conduct and that excellent service. After fighting through sagacity. Every page of his Journal bears the Burmese war, he made a casual visit to the impress of vivid and almost passionate China; and it was on that voyage, that the sensibility; his whole heart and soul are in passion for exploring and mastering the each successive portion of his Narratives. great Asiatic Archipelago first took hold of Chivalrous almost to Quixotism, he sets out his soaring imagination. For eight years as the very Knight-Errant of justice and he cherished his projects with all the pehumanity, among Tribes abandoned to the culiar tenacity of his character. He fitted extremest evils of barbarous oppression. out a vessel, the Royalist-belonging originHe makes his way among them, as if really ally, as we believe, to the Yacht squadron possessed of those magical powers which his-tested her powers, and those of his crew, simple observers attribute to him; beats by three years' cruising in the Mediterranedown opposition; wins over suspicion; an, and elsewhere; and, having trained his

men and himself into a thorough compre- its original mountain fastnesses of Sumatra hension of, and mutual reliance on each where the cradle of this great nation is supother, set sail as independent as a Bucanier posed to exist. Superior to the original inof old, though with far different objects, and habitants in civilization and in energy, they made the coast of Borneo on the first of have subjugated the Dyaks, wherever they August 1839. came within their reach; and have estabExcept the interior of Australia and Afri-lished a number of small commercial states ca, there is no portion of the earth which on the coast. The Malays have generally presents such a blank on our maps, as this embraced the Mahometan religion; some vast island. Borneo, or Bruni, is properly of their states are governed by Arab Seriffs, the name of a kingdom and city on its north- proud of their descent from the Prophet; western coast-a great and wealthy state in and these were among Mr. Brooke's worst the days of the old Portuguese navigators, opponents. Guilty of inconceivable oppresbut now much decayed. Pulo Kalamantan sion toward their subject tribes; remorseis (or was) the general name of the island less pirates by sea, and tyrants at home; among the Malays. The climate is equato- false, vindictive, cunning, and rapacious,rial, that is to say, moist to excess; and the Malays have hitherto borne a very black subject to showers at almost all periods of character in the estimation of European trathe year, but with a very small range of ders; and form the heroes of numberless temperature; generally resembling that of dark narratives of maritime adventure. But Ceylon.

Mr. Brooke, whose singularly large sympathy is one of the most attractive points of his benevolent character, has a good word even for the Malays. After speaking of the judgment formed by European traders, eager after gain, probably not over-scrupulous about the means of attaining it,'-of the Rajahs and Courtiers with whom they are brought into contact, always ready to repay cheating with treachery, he adds, that when removed from the immediate influence of their governors, the Malays in general

The perennial rains nourish a great number of fine rivers, up which the tide rises for many miles, affording the only communications with the interior of which Europeans have hitherto been able to avail themselves. For beyond the banks of the tide rivers, all that is known is covered with the thickest forest; nor is it ascertained whether the interior consists of mountain, table land, or low country; nor has any thing been discovered with greater certainty of its inhabitants. It is a mere blank, peopled by fancy and tradition with strange animals, * But certainly not, if we may trust Mr. Davidson, Who taught the native' (in Sumatra) 'his and stranger men--the Old Man of the roguish tricks? who introduced false weights? Wood, or Pongo of Buffon (termed Mias who brought to the coast 56 lb. weights with a rombi by Mr.Brooke, who has collected some screw in the bottom, which opened for the insercurious details respecting the animal, the tion of from 10 to 15 lb. of lead, after their correctmost powerful and fiercest of the Orang- with his own weights? I challenge contradicness had been tried by the native in comparison Outang race), and tribes of men dwelling tion when I assert, that English and American in trees, scarcely superior to the Orang in shipmasters have been for thirty years addicted to intelligence. The coast is every where fer- these dishonest practices.'-(Trade and Travel, tile, and highly productive in the few parts p. 90.) Yet Mr. Davidson is no very sensitive ob where cultivation has penetrated. That its server;-witness his vaunting and sophistical de fence of the wretched opium trade, p. 240; and climate is healthy may be inferred from the his suggestions for our treatment of the Japanese, fact that the volumes of Captain Keppel, p. 286! Every thing, says Socrates, has two hand in all their details of adventure, contain dles-and it must be confessed, that if commercial scarcely any allusions to suffering from sick-enterprise has made an opening for the introdue tion of European civilization in the East, commer! ness; though the chief work performed by cial morality seems likely to neutralize much of him and his crew lay in the exploring of the benefit. We are not ignorant of the move marshy inlets and tide rivers, such as, in ment on the part of some of our Hong Kong resi tropical Africa, form the very haunts of dents, to induce Government to break faith with death. China, on some shuffling plea of non-performance by the Chinese of their part of the tready, by re As far as hitherto explored, the popula-taining the Island of Chusan for the advantage of tion of Borneo seems to consist of two races British trade. But this is too important a subject -Malays and Dyaks. The former have for discussion in a Note. In the mean time, the spread themselves all over the Eastern Ar- reader may consult, if he is in quest of immediate information, Mr. Montgomery Martin's lately chipelago, much as the Pelasgian race did published Reports, Minutes, and Despatches on in the early days of Greece ;--issuing from the British Position and Prospects in China.'

are neither treacherous nor bloodthirsty. Cheerful, polite, hospitable, gentle in their manners, they live in communities with few-scent, robbers from pride as well as taste; and

The Datus, or chiefs,' says Captain Keppel are incorrigible; for they are pirates by dehonorable hereditary pursuit. They are indifthey look upon their occupation as the most ferent to blood, fond of plunder, but fondest of slaves: they despise trade, though its profits be greater, and, as I have said, they look upon piracy as their calling, and the noblest occupation of chiefs and freemen. Their swords they show with boasts as having belonged to their terrible in their day; and they always speak ancestors, who were pirates, renowned and of their ancestral heir loom as decayed from its pristine vigor, but still the wielding of it as the highest of earthly existences.'

The Sarebus and Sakafrans (two of the 'fine fiercest pirate tribes) are described as men, fairer than the Malays; with sharp, eyes, thin lips, and handsome countenances, though frequently marked by an expression of cunning.'

keen

er crimes and fewer punishments than most other people of the globe. They are passionately fond of their children, and indulgent even to a fault; and the ties of family relationship and good feeling continue in force for several generations. The feeling of the Malay, fostered by education, is acute, and his passions are roused if shame be put upon him indeed, this dread of shame amounts to a disease; and the evil is, that it has taken a wrong direction, the dread of shame being more of exposure or abuse, than contrition for any offence. I have always found them good-tempered and obliging,-wonderfully amenable to authority, and quite as sensible of benefits conferred, and as grateful, as other people of more favored countries. Of course there is a reverse to this picture. The worst feature The Dyak Darrat, or land Dyaks, seem of Malay character is the want of all canto differ in no essential particular, of landor or openness, and the restless spirit of guage or customs, from the men of the sea, cunning intrigue, which animates them from except in as far as depends on their inland the highest to the lowest. Like other Asiat-position. The only remarkable difference ics, truth is a rare quality among them. of usage noticed by Mr. Brooke is, that the They are superstitious; somewhat inclined latter use, and the former do not, the curito deceit in the ordinary concerns of life; ous weapon called the sumpitan, or blowand they have neither principle nor conpipe, for shooting poisoned arrows. 'The science when they have the means of opwounds inflicted by these are curable,' says pressing an infidel and a Dyak, who is their Mr. Brooke, 'by antidotes, known to the inferior in civilization and intellect.'--Kep-natives; nor are they regarded, apparently, pel, vol. ii. p. 128.)

much terror.' And we suspect the whole romantic history of the poisonous trees of the Indian Isles must be banished, with so many other marvels, to the province of legends; since a friend of Mr. Davidson in Java, to prove their absurdity, climbed up an upas-tree, and passed two hours in its branches, where he took his lunch, and smoked a cigar!'

The Dyaks have from time immemorial been looked upon as the bondsmen of the Malays, and the Rajahs consider them much in the same light as they would a drove of oxen

The Dyaks, who form the mass of the population, seem to be of the same original race with the Bugis of Celebes-a branch of the great and problematical Polynesian family of mankind. They are of two sorts -the land and sea Dyaks. The latter, as their name indicates, are a maritime people. Their homes are in places difficult of access-far up the estuaries of their numerous rivers; whence, under Malay leadership, they sally in those innumerable pirate Prahus, which have so long been the terror of e. as personal and disposable property. the Eastern seas. As in Homeric days-and They were governed in Sarawak by three it is scarcely conceivable how many pas- and the Tumangong. To the Patingi they local officers, called the Patingi, the Bandar, sages of Captain Keppel and Mr. Brooke's paid a small yearly revenue of rice; but this narrative, as of all narratives which treat deficiency of revenue was made up by sendof a fresh and rarely visited race in a state ing a quantity of goods, chiefly salt, Dyak of rudimental civilization, bring us back to cloths, and iron, and demanding a price for the days of Homer-piracy is the great them six or eight times more than their value. outlet of the spirit of warlike adventure; The produce collected by the Dyaks was also and so rooted is it in the habits of the peo-wax, &c. &c., were taken at a price fixed by monopolized, and the edible birds'-nests, beesple, that its extirpation will be a work of the Patingi, who, moreover, claimed mats, the greatest difficulty-of which we shall fowls, fruit, and every other necessary, at his have more to say presently. pleasure, and could likewise make the Dyaks