Some Sarawak curiosities in the British Library.

A recent expedition to London turned up some interesting finds in the British Library printed books and other collections which I think are worth putting on record.

One rare item which I have never seen mentioned before is Mrs. Harriette McDougall's The Sarawak Mission: A Service of Song, London: Church of England Sunday School Institute, n.d. [1878]. 34pp. As far as I know, there is no copy in the Sarawak Museum Library or in the Bishop's House in Kuching. The little pamphlet is in fact a kind of oratorio consisting of text (presumably to be read aloud) and accompanying hymns. I shall pass over the hymns, other than to quote something highly appropriate from the prolific hymn writer I. D. Sankey, "Here Am I, Send Me":

   If you cannot cross the ocean,
   And the heathen land explore,
   You can find the heathen nearer,
   You can help them at your door.
   If you cannot give them thousands,
   You can give the widow's mite,
   And the least you give for Jesus,
   Will be precious in his sight.

There is more than a little irony in this, as it was Harriette herself who had persuaded her husband, Francis Thomas McDougall, to undertake the responsibility of establishing the SPG (Anglican) mission in Sarawak in 1848 and who, after returning to England in broken health in 1864, may well have reflected at times on the relative ease of assisting "the heathen nearer." If Frank McDougall had had his way, he would no doubt have become a successful London surgeon and Harriette a society matron famous for her charitable work, her musical soirees and landscape paintings and her large brood of children--rather than the two hardy survivors of almost a dozen pregnancies.

The text is by way of being a brief but comprehensive history of the Borneo Mission. The most detailed section is devoted to Lundu, where the part-Singhalese priest, Edward Gomes, was posted in early 1853 and whose Dayak Sebuyau responded enthusiastically to the Christian view of the world. Harriette's account is notable for its identification by name of the early Lundu converts and its description of how their musical ability was used by Gomes and McDougall in bringing them together with other Dayak converts at places like Banting, so that they might "learn to know and love each other." Given the ancient antagonism between the Dayak Sebuyau and the Dayak Balau, this was no mean challenge.

From his letters to the SPG and from other sources, it is clear that McDougall privately despised Gomes, referring to him as "that halfcaste" and suspecting him both of embezzlement and of being in league with the Rajah. However, Harriette's warm and homely description of Gomes's relationship with the Dayak boys at his Lundu school suggests that she, for one, had formed an appreciation of his good qualities. Gomes' conversion of the local manang, Bulang, must have been a vital step in the creation of a Christian community at Lundu. And it was the coming of Christianity which she saw as enhancing their skills and dedication as agriculturalists. They literally reaped the rewards of abandoning heathenism:

   At the foot of the blue hills of Lundu live a tribe of Dyaks, who
   were formerly the most determined enemies of the pirates of
   Sakarran and Sarebas. The chief of this tribe was a devoted admirer
   of Sir James Brooke, and one of his earliest friends, long before
   he became rajah of the country. The man was enlightened enough to
   follow the counsels of the English Resident, and the missionary
   stationed at Lundu. His two eldest sons were killed in the pirate
   fight of 1849, by Lingi, the Sakarran chief, and only Callon, the
   youngest, remained as heir to the Orang Kaya Pemancha. The next
   year Lingi paid a visit to Sarawak, with many followers, apparently
   to pay his rice tax, really to see if he could not take the heads
   of Sir James Brooke and his officers. In this he was foiled by the
   watchfulness of the Malays. The day Lingi left Sarawak to return
   home the Lundus arrived, and hearing he was still in the river,
   entreated to be allowed to follow him, and take his head. 'They
   would never take another head, but just Singi's [sic] who had
   killed Callon's brothers!' They were refused, of course, and it was
   indeed a mark of their love for Sir James Brooke that they obeyed,
   for what could be more natural than their cry for vengeance, as at
   that time they knew nothing of Christian forgiveness? In 1853
   Callon gave his own boy, Langi, to Mr. Gomes, the missionary, to
   bring up. This lad came to Kuching, the capital, with eleven other
   candidates for baptism before Whit Sunday, 1854. The church at
   Lundu was not yet completed, so they were all baptized at the
   mother church at Kuching, on that Whit Sunday, the first fruit of
   the Lundu Church, and a very delightful time it was. Everybody in
   the Mission House enjoyed hearing these men and boys singing their
   hymns and chant in Dyak, before they went to bed at night. All wild
   people love music, and learn poetry much more readily than prose.
   Mr. Gomes, therefore, wrote or translated many hymns for their use,
   and taught them tunes and chants which they were never weary of
   singing. After Whit Sunday, they accompanied Mr. Gomes and Bishop
   McDougall to Banting, that the converts of these different rivers
   might learn to know and love one another. The Linga Dyaks had
   learnt the same hymns, but knew no tunes for them but their own
   wild strains, and admired the superior melody of the Lundus very
   much. However, when Mr. Chambers, their missionary, was married
   they were also instructed, and proved in the end as good musicians
   as the Lundus.

      Among the Lundu converts was a Manang, or charm doctor, an
   important person, who renounced his evil practices, and became a
   catechist to his tribe. Bulang was an honest man, and found it
   difficult to follow a profession of imposture, even before he was a
   Christian. Pamoulin, an old man, was another of this little band.
   He was very rich, and his wife was so angry at his conversion that
   she declared she would leave him if he was baptized, and take half
   of his property with her as her share. Pamoulin said very quietly,
   'If she will go, she must. She is only a woman, and her judgement
   in the matter is not likely to be good.' I fear this might be said
   of Dyak women, who are far behind the men in intelligence because
   they are so superstitious.

      Bugai, Bulang's brother, was, perhaps, the most intelligent of
   the party; he has long been a teacher to his people. The rest were
   lads, who were devoted to Mr. Gomes, followed him about, slept
   under his sofa at night, and never left him. The good old chief was
   too ill to come to Kuching at that time. He was to have been
   baptized on the return of the party to Lundu, but, alas! died in
   their absence, a Christian in heart, though not outwardly received
   by the Church.

      In 1856 Bishop McDougall went to Lundu and consecrated the pretty
   wooden church.

      The mission has since sent out branches to Sedema and Lara, in
   the hill country beyond. These tribes now have their churches and
   schools. Lundu is a lovely place, the fields and gardens which
   delight the eye all along the banks of the river bear witness to
   the superior cultivation of their land since the people learnt the
   wisdom of their English teachers, and the school and church bells
   day by day tell of their progress in the knowledge of God and
   CHRIST.

Harriette also gave more economical accounts of the other missions at Lingga and Undup, describing how Buda, the son of a notorious pirate chief, had put himself under the instruction of Chambers at Banting in 1863 before working as a catechist, and that William Crossland at the Undup had used his medical knowledge to good effect. She believed that a good sign of the impact of the Banting mission on the Dayaks was the abandonment of their old custom of burying the live child with the mother when the latter had died giving birth. Buda's enthusiasm gave rise to the people of Seruai longhouse on the Krian building themselves a school chapel.

There is no evidence that Harriette's "service of song" was ever performed, although is quite likely that this did happen during the time when the Bishop was attached to Winchester Cathedral as Dean for a few years from 1872. A record of the McDougalls' time in Sarawak can be found in the two books published by Harriette, Letters from Sarawak; Addressed to a Child, London: Grant & Griffith, 1854, and Sketches of Our Life in Sarawak, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1882. Harriette's brother, Charles Bunyon, also published many of their letters in Memoirs of Bishop McDougall ... and of Harriette His Wife, London: Longman, Green & Co., 1884.

One anecdote which did not appear in any of these writings is of some interest. Harriette noted in her narrative that in 1859, the year of the "Malay Plot" to unseat the Brookes and kill the missionaries, one of the principal conspirators, "used frequently to come to the Mission House, and ask the Bishop's little daughter to tell him fairy tales, and pretended to be their intimate friend ..."

Another rare item is the anonymous A Few Months in Borneo, London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, n.d. [1867?]. The Library's entry gives it a subtitle: Being a few short sketches from the journal of a Naval Officer, edited by M.B.B., but this information does not actually appear on the flyleaf of the book itself. It appears to have been written by J. A. Sewell, a former naval officer recruited by James Brooke to manage the plantation which his friend and patron Baroness Angela Burdett Coutts had promised to set up in Sarawak to foster agriculture. Arriving at Kuching in late 1864, Sewell oversaw the establishment of the estate between the Quop and Sarawak rivers and the felling of the thick forest there. In February 1865, fifty Boyanese laborers arrived from Java with another Englishman, E. J. Martin, to provide the necessary plantation labor (Coutts had stipulated that Chinese labor should not be employed) and Sewell began to experiment with gambier, pepper, and mulberry trees for the cultivation of silkworms. A private operation, the Borneo Sugar Company, was already established somewhere in the Kuching area but was under-capitalized and doomed to failure, according to Sewell, who advised the Sarawak government against rescuing it. He suggested instead that the Sibu area was much more suitable for sugar and that a mill should be established there.

Sewell met the Italian scientists Odoardo Beccari and the Marquis Doria and made an expedition with them to Peninjau, where Wallace had camped some years earlier, as well as a longer one up the Rejang beyond Kanowit. However, in the process he contracted a debilitating fever (probably malaria) and had to return to England at short notice, leaving Martin (who was by then the British Honorary Vice Consul in Sarawak) to manage the plantation. Although Charles Brooke (who was responsible for the supervision of the estate in the Rajah's absence) was also keen on silkworm production as well as pepper, gambier, and cocoa production, he became frustrated with the lack of progress and by June 1869 the experiment was in disarray with Martin having to sell the equipment in order to pay wages. Charles Brooke's correspondence with Coutts during the mid-1860s is held by the British Library as part of the last of ten bound volumes of letters between James Brooke and the Baroness (and her companion, Mrs. Hannah Brown), from the time of his retirement to Sheepstor in Devon in mid-1859 until shortly before his death in June 1868. Apart from his anonymous book, Sewell also left an interesting watercolor and pencil drawing of the "Interior of my Bungalow Sarawak 1864" and "My boy Baboo" which was part of the large collection of Sarawakiana acquired by Malaysia's Arkib Negara from the London antiquarian bookseller, John Randall, some years ago. The British Library's own collection of pictorial material from Sarawak is absolutely insignificant, consisting of one c. 1860 etching from a drawing of Santubong Mountain made somewhere near Matang by the geological surveyor H. Williams in the style of Frank Marryat.

The British Library also holds the four books, or rather pamphlets, self-published by one Archibald Allison in the late 1890s: The Real Pirates of Borneo (Singapore: Kim Yew Hean Press, 1898), How the Church Mission People are Treated in the East (Singapore: Kim Yew Hean Press, 1898), Singapore Law and Lawyers (Singapore: Yu Sing Press, 1899) and Freedom Struggle with Oppression (Penang: International Press, 1900). Allison was a Scots mining engineer who came to Sarawak in January 1882 to work for the Borneo Company Ltd. and was sent to the mercury mines at Tegora near Bau where he later took charge of operations until he was discharged in early 1893. He then worked for the new coal company in Labuan but appears to have been dismissed in early 1898. This prompted him to write The Real Pirates of Borneo as an expose of the corruption that he claimed to have discovered within these companies, and which he attributed to Alfred Hart Everett and his brothers E. E. Everett and H. H. Everett, John Robertson (Manager of the Central Borneo Company) and the Singapore accountant and lawyer, St John Hughes. He claimed that the Everetts and their friends had broken up the old coal company at Labuan in order to float the Borneo Minerals Company as part of a regional scam. Indeed, he wrote,

   there has been a combination at work throughout the Malay peninsula
   and surrounding islands and that by their actions many of the old
   Native and other trading firms have been broken up, their money,
   mines and concessions were taken possession of by the Officials in
   Labuan and their agents and friends in other parts making money
   through the transfer of property and the floating of other
   companies.

Allison brought an unsuccessful action against the Borneo Company in the Court of Queen's Bench in London and was later declared bankrupt in Singapore and his book suppressed with Sarawak government support. Charles Bampfylde, a Sarawak official who was in Singapore for the court case there, described him to the court as "undoubtedly of unsound mind, and appears to be suffering from the well known mauia [sic] of immagining [sic] himself the victim of unscrupulous persons."

Bampfylde was a level-headed character and his opinion cannot be dismissed lightly. However, he was also a loyal servant of the second Rajah who for some reason had declined to listen to what Allison had to say. One of his accusations, which suggests how the Everetts and Robertson found favor with the Rajah, was that they wrote reports to the Straits Times and other Singapore newspapers deliberately maligning the Sultan of Brunei's government. Charles Brooke had not yet given up his ambition to absorb what was left of the sultanate, together with North Borneo, and any vilification of Brunei rule would have been warmly welcomed by him.

Allison had only praise for Ranee Margaret and the harmony which her presence and her love of music brought to the little European community in Kuching. However, he was something of a religious bigot and his deep suspicion of the Roman Catholic Church led him to see nothing but evil in its establishment in Sarawak, something to which Margaret's return to her earlier Catholic faith was no doubt connected. Although he did not suggest it, we might also wonder if this may also have been a reason for Margaret's and Charles' subsequent estrangement and effective separation.

Allison tried hard to join in the lives of the fifty or so Chinese and native workmen whom he supervised at Tegora. Keenly interested in music and poetry and himself composing numerous ballads, he appreciated Malay pantun and repeated a popular one which obviously took his fancy:

   The butterfly that soars on high,
   Above the sand and the Ocean brine,
   I told you once and once again,
   I say don't touch the wine.

There is no indication of whether Allison had succumbed to drink by 1898, but it was not an uncommon fate for the European employees of the Borneo Company. He certainly does not appear to have fathered a family by a local wife, which was another occupational hazard. Nicholas Tarling, who has looked most closely at the period in question in Britain, the Brookes and Brunei (1971), follows Bampfylde and Robertson in dismissing Allison as "mad." If this were so, it seems at least plausible that his condition was brought on by the barrier of silence his accusations received from the Rajah, the Borneo Company, and, it seems, everyone else. A good deal of research would have to be done to establish whether there was any truth on his side. Whatever happened to him after he published his last blast in Penang in early 1900 is a mystery. Nevertheless, he remains 19th Century Borneo's most prolific pamphleteer.

Bob Reece

Division of Arts

Murdoch University

Western Australia