Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak Part 2

In January, 1851, the Church of St. Thomas at Kuching was consecrated by Bishop Wilson, of Calcutta. On the afternoon of the 18th, I was returning from church, and mounting the flight of steps which led to the porch of the house, I saw a large steamer turn the corner of the Pedungen Reach and anchor above the fort. It was the _Semiramis_ bringing the Bishop, Archdeacon Pratt and Mrs. Pratt, the Rev. H. Moule from Singapore, Dr. Beale, the Bishop's physician, and Mr. Fox from Bishop's College. This party, escorted by Frank, who rushed home to dress himself in black (his usual attire being grey flannels and a white muslin ca.s.sock), very soon marched into the house, exclaiming with pleasure at the wreaths of white jessamine growing over the stairs, and the fresh air of the hill. We had so lately settled in the house that it was not half furnished, but we gave up our rooms to our guests and stowed ourselves in an empty corner. I remember the satisfaction with which Mrs. Stahl produced the remains of the Christmas plum-pudding, and the comfort it was to have a joint of venison in the house. Dinner was soon on the table, and immediately afterwards the Bishop read prayers and retired to his room. We all went into the library, where we had tea and talk. It was very refres.h.i.+ng to have an English lady to speak to, and Mrs. Pratt was so tall and fair that everybody admired her, especially the Malays, who used to say that it was sufficient pleasure to look at her throat only.

The natives used to flock into the house every evening to see the Tuan Padre besar (the great priest), and all the new-comers. At half-past five a.m. the Bishop's bell used to ring for his servants to dress him, and bring his tea. The whole house was astir then. The Indian servants of the party slept in the verandahs, and seemed to me to talk all night.

The next day was Sunday, but the church was not cleared out for consecration, and most of the fittings had come from Singapore in the _Semiramis_, and could not be got out on Sat.u.r.day night. So morning and evening prayers were as usual in the dining-room, and what with the officers of the _Semiramis_, the English of the place, the school and our home party, the room was very full. The children sang with all their might, and were much interested with the visitors. The Bishop and Archdeacon Pratt preached morning and afternoon. On Wednesday the church was ready. Mrs. Stahl and I were up before dawn, covering ha.s.socks with Turkey red cotton. The church was tiled, but platforms of wood, covered with mats, which were a present from Mr. and Mrs. Stahl, were placed on the tiles, and the chairs just arrived by _Semiramis_ stood on them. We afterwards had to clear the platforms away--they became full of white ants; but they looked very well at first.

When all was ready, Captain Brooke and all the princ.i.p.al English inhabitants met the Bishop at the church door, and presented a pet.i.tion that he would consecrate the building. He then entered, and walked up and down the church repeating psalms, etc. Then came morning service; afterwards, the Bishop preached, and as he was very energetic and struck the desk with his hand, our gentle Datu Bandar thought he was angry, and slipped quickly out of church. There was a confirmation of a Chinese teacher and my little maid Susan after the celebration of Holy Communion, and then, after three hours and a half service, we returned home. The next morning, early, the Bishop consecrated the burial-ground.

He was carried round it in a chair, for he was unable to walk much; and though he was a hale old man of seventy-two, his many years' residence at Calcutta had, I imagine, spoilt his walking powers.

He was very kind and friendly to us all, and admired the church very much. His visit was a boon to the mission. It impressed the native mind with the importance Christians attach to their churches and to public wors.h.i.+p. When our church bell called us to prayers twice every day, the Mahometans revived the daily muezzin at the mosque; and the sight of the public practice of religion amongst us quickened the Malays in the performance of their own religious rites, and from that time there were many more pilgrims to Mecca from Sarawak.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GIRLS.

Having said so much about the schoolboys, it would be unfair not to mention the girls. Mary, Julia, and Phoebe, the half-caste children, grew up beside us, and so did Polly, who was a Dyak baby brought to me after the pirate expedition of 1849. Her mother fled, and dropped her baby in the long gra.s.s, where it was found by an English sailor, who carried it to the boats and gave it to one of the women captives to bring to me--a poor little, skinny thing, with long yellow hair, like a fairy changeling. I got a wet nurse for her and fed her with baby food, but she got thinner and more elfish-looking. One day her nurse was standing by while the other children were eating their dinner, and Polly stretched out her arms to the rice and salt fish, and began to cry.

"Oh," said I, "perhaps she can eat;" and from that day the little one ate her rice and discarded the nurse, growing fat and merry like the rest.

Polly had a great talent for languages. Of course she learnt English and Malay at once, hearing both languages from her earliest years. But how she learnt Chinese as well used to surprise me. In 1866 I took Polly to Hongkong. She was then nurse to our youngest child. The lady of the house where we were staying accosted Polly in the pigeon English of the place--a jargon mysterious to unaccustomed ears. It must be allowed that Polly was not unlike a Chinese in appearance. She stared at the lady, and then at me, upon hearing directions she could not understand. I laughed. "Speak to Polly in English," I said, "and she will understand what you mean." "Impossible," answered Mrs. M----; "my servants tell me she must be Chinese, for she can talk in two dialects."

Polly married a Christian Chinaman afterwards, so her taste lay in that direction. When I last heard of her, she was teaching in the day-schools at Sarawak.

Mary married the schoolmaster, Mr. Owen. We brought Julia home with us in 1869, and put her into a training-school for teachers in Dublin, where she was much beloved. When we returned to Sarawak, in 1861, she became the schoolmistress to the girls I then had in the house, and others who came as day-scholars. She was a thoroughly good girl, and a great comfort to me, but of course she married, a young man employed as mate in the _Rainbow_, a Government vessel running between Sarawak and Singapore. Some years afterwards Forrest died, and Julia married again, an older man very well off. I have no doubt she is bringing up her family in the fear of G.o.d, but I have not heard of her lately. I had many trials with the girls, more than I like to recount. All the first little family of Chinese girls we received in 1850 belonged to the tribe who rebelled in 1857, and their relations carried them off when we were driven from the mission-house. They were taken to Bau where their relations lived, but what became of them in the terrible flight to the Dutch country, when many were killed, and still more died of the privations of the jungle, we never could hear.

Sarah and f.a.n.n.y came to us in 1856. They were little orphans, half Chinese, half Dyak, whom, with two more girls and four boys, the Government had redeemed from slavery and gave to the mission. Some of these children stayed at Lundu with Mr. Gomez and his family; some came to me--Sarah, f.a.n.n.y, and Betsy, a baby whom I gave out to nurse. Poor little Sarah had a very scarred face from a burn, but she was a bright, clever child. f.a.n.n.y was better-looking, but more heavy and less impressible. These two girls married native catechists in course of time. I trust they are doing some good among their own people.

In the year 1862 some little captives fell into the hands of Captain Brooke, then ruling at Sarawak. They came from Sarebas, and one of them had been wounded by a spear, though he was only a tiny boy of four years old. Captain Brooke wrote to me to know if I would take this family of children into the school--two girls, Limo and Ambat, and two boys, Esau and Nigo. If I could not take them, he said, they must be sent back to their own country immediately, as there was a boat departing the next day. The Bishop was away from Sarawak, so I had to decide; nor would there have been any doubt in my mind about it, but Esau the eldest boy was covered with kurap, from head to foot. This is a skin disease to which Dyaks are subject, and which suggests the leprosy of the Old Testament, for the outer skin peels off in flakes, and gives almost a "white as snow" appearance to the surface. I doubted whether I ought to take a pupil so afflicted, for it is decidedly catching. I found that Ambat and Nigo had both patches of it here and there from contact with Esau, whereas Limo, who was older, more clothed, and who slept apart, was quite free.

Still, the alternative was nothing less than sending these four children to their heathen relations, and to a place at that time beyond the reach of Christ's gospel--a terrible idea which could not be entertained for a moment. So at last I sent for them, resolving to keep them in our house, and not allow them to go down to the school until the Bishop returned.

Shortly afterwards a Chinese doctor came to the Bishop, and said, "If you will give me fifteen dollars I will cure that boy of kurap. I have a wonderful medicine for it, made at the Natunas Islands." So he had the money on condition of the cure. The medicine was an ointment as black as pitch--indeed, I believe there was a good portion of tar in it. With this the doctor smeared Esau all over. He was to wear no clothes, and not to be washed or touched. I used to see him, poor child, skipping about exactly like the little black imps depicted in _Punch_.

The ointment did not hurt him, but every third day the doctor came and washed it all off with hot water: this was rather a painful operation, but it was worth while undergoing some discomfort, for at the end of a month the disease had vanished, and "his skin came again like the flesh of a child." Esau grew up to be a good man and catechist to his own countrymen, so it was well I ventured to keep him at Sarawak. The other children soon got well when separated from him. Kurap arises, I believe, from poor food and exposure to weather. A Dyak wears no clothes except a long sash wound round him and the ends hanging down before and behind; and when we consider the hot sun and frequent rains which beat upon him, for he lives mostly out of doors, it is no wonder his skin suffers. Limo and Ambat were clever children. In a letter, written about a year after they came to us, I find this pa.s.sage: "I have only four girls who can read English and understand it. My two little Dyaks, Limo and Ambat, are very fond of learning English hymns, and say them in such a plaintive, touching voice, p.r.o.nouncing each syllable so clearly, but they don't understand it until it has been explained to them in Malay. Limo's brother and uncle came this week from Sarebas--two fine, tall men, with only chawats[2] and earrings by way of clothes. Limo was delighted; she would have gone away with them in their great boat if I had allowed her.

No doubt they told her how much they would do for her at Sarebas.

However, I drew a little picture of the women setting her to draw large bamboos full of water, and to beat out the paddy with a long pole--very hard work, and always done by the young girls,--a more truthful and less delightful view of things; so Limo said she would stay with me until she was grown up. I gave her a pair of trousers for each of the men, a present generally much esteemed. But these two were very wild folk; they laughed very much at the trousers, and carried them away over their shoulders."

[Footnote 2: A chawat is a long strip of cotton or bark cloth wound round the body.]

I must not forget to tell the story of my dear child Nietfong, although it is a very sad one. She was the daughter of the Chinese baker who lived in the lane which led from our garden to the town. I used to befriend her mother, a delicate little woman, very roughly treated by her husband. She twice ran to me for shelter when her husband beat her, and though of course I always had to give her up to him when he came begging for her the next day, he knew what I thought of him, and had a sort of respect for me in consequence. This poor woman died young, and left one little girl about four years old. Nietfong used to come up to day-school when she was old enough, and in 1858, when I was so happy as to have an English governess for my Mab, I took the little Chinese girl to live with us and join Mab in her lessons. She was quite a little lady, so gentle, teachable, and well mannered. In 1860 we took our children to England: Mab was six years old, and could not with any safety remain longer in a hot climate. Little Nietfong went home, for her father would not allow her to go to the school in my absence. We returned in 1861, leaving three children in England, and brought a baby girl out with us. As I walked up the lane to the mission-house, Nietfong stood watching for me at the gate. "Take me home with you; oh, I am so glad you are come back!" So I took her home, and Nietfong told me that her father had married again, and that her step-mother was unkind to her, and beat her when she said the prayers I had taught her night and morning; "but," said the child, "I always prayed, nevertheless." She lived with us till she was about thirteen, perhaps not so much; then her father came to the Bishop and said he had sold Nietfong for a good sum of money to a man in China, and must send her there to stay with her grandmother.

In vain I entreated Acheck not to be so wicked. "Tell me how much you would get for your daughter," I said, "and we will give you the money."

He laughed, and said I could not afford it, mentioning a large sum, but I do not remember what it was; so I had to break the sad news to Nietfong. We wept and prayed together that she might remain steadfast in her Christian faith. As she then knew English very well, I gave her an English Prayer-book, which she promised to use. Soon after, Acheck himself took her to China; and when he came back, he would only say, "Oh yes, of course she is happy--she is married and well off." I have always felt sure that this dear girl was kept by G.o.d's grace from sin and evil, for I believe she truly loved and desired to serve G.o.d. There was something especially pure about her. Nietfong was never wilfully naughty; she was one of those blameless ones who seem untouched by the evil around them. We shall not know the sequel of her history until by G.o.d's mercy we meet her in the heavenly home.

As I have spoken about the Dyak kurap, I may as well here mention the real leprosy of the East, which was a terrible but not frequent scourge among the Chinese. The Rajah had a small house built out of the town for any men who were so afflicted, and they were fed by Government. The Bishop or his chaplain used to go and teach these poor creatures, but there were not more than three or four of them at a time. We knew one Chinese woman who had leprosy. She became a Christian, and liked to have a cottage lecture at her house. I often went to see her. Her toes gradually dropped off, and her fingers. I never heard her complain. One day I went to see her and found her very ill, constantly sick. She said she had been poisoned; and it seemed probable, for no medicine gave her any relief, and in a few hours she died. The natives have such a horror of leprosy that they do not like to touch the body of any one who has died of it, so the Bishop and Owen, the schoolmaster, laid poor Acheen in her coffin; and this charitable act they performed for any unfortunate who died of this terrible disease.

Acheen had adopted a little boy, Sifok by name. She must have been very kind to the child, for he seemed wild with grief when she died, and was very anxious that whoever had poisoned his mother, as he called her, should be punished. But the case was not clear, and no one was punished.

We took Sifok into the school, and I taught him to play the harmonium, which at last he accomplished very fairly.

Amongst our schoolboys was one particularly steady and religious. Tung Fa was so good a Malay and Chinese scholar that he could interpret at the Chinese Bible cla.s.s, and also the sermon at the Chinese service at church on Sunday. I think he knew his Bible almost by heart. He was never very strong in health; then his feet began to swell, and leprosy declared itself. For a long time he was carried to and from the church in a chair, but at last he was so diseased that he was removed from the school-house, and a little hut was built for him close to us. The boys brought him his food, and of course he had anything he fancied from our kitchen. I think the servants were very kind to him, and he exhibited a beautiful example of patience and resignation until the disease affected his brain; even then he was quite gentle, only he was always begging to be baptized over again that he might die free from sin. This mistake arose entirely from his illness. We were quite thankful when one morning he was found dead in his bed. What a blissful waking, after so much suffering!

CHAPTER VII.

THE LUNDUS.

The beginning of the year 1851 brought us much sorrow. After my illness in November, 1850, we were persuaded by Sir James Brooke to accompany him to Penang Hill, where the Government bungalow had been placed at his disposal; consequently, after Christmas, we sailed in H.M.S. _Amazon_, through the kindness of Captain Troubridge, for Singapore, taking our child Harry with us. We had to wait some weeks at Singapore for the Rajah, and soon after our arrival our little boy died of diptheria, leaving us childless, for we had already lost two infants at Sarawak.

This grief threw a veil of sadness over the remaining years of our first sojourn in the East. Perhaps it urged us to a deeper interest in the native people than we might have felt had there been any little ones of our own to care for; but those six years "the flowers all died along our way," one infant after another being laid in G.o.d's acre.

We stayed six weeks amid the lovely scenery and in the cooler air of Penang Hill, and returned to Sarawak in May, Admiral Austin giving us a pa.s.sage in H.M.S. _Fury_. The admiral gave me his cabin to sleep in, all the gentlemen sleeping in the cuddy. I woke in the night, hearing a rus.h.i.+ng sound in the air, then, patter, patter, all over the bed. I jumped up, and called Frank to bring a light and see what was the matter. "Oh," said a voice from the cuddy, "better not: it is only c.o.c.kroaches, and if you saw them you would not go to sleep again." This swarm of c.o.c.kroaches came out several times before daylight. The next night I put up a mosquito-net to protect my face and hands from these disgusting creatures. When a steamer has been nearly three years in these hot lat.i.tudes it becomes horribly full of rats and c.o.c.kroaches. My husband, taking a trip in H.M.S. _Contest_, in 1858, woke one morning unable to open one eye. Presently he felt a sharp p.r.i.c.k, and found a large c.o.c.kroach sitting on his eyelid and biting the corner of his eye.

They also bite all round the nails of your fingers and toes, unless they are closely covered. It must be said that insects are a great discomfort at Sarawak. Mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and stinging flies which turn your hands into the likeness of boxing-gloves, infest the banks of the rivers, and the sea-sh.o.r.e. Flying bugs sometimes scent the air unpleasantly, and there are hornets in the woods whose sting is dangerous. When we look back upon the happy days we spent in that lovely country, these drawbacks are forgotten; the past is always beautiful, and shadows, even of sorrow and sickness, only enhance the interest of the picture. Sin alone, in ourselves and those about us, can make the past hateful, and the great charm of the future is that it is untouched by sin. Happy, then, are those who are able to look back on the past with smiles of thankfulness, while they stretch out their arms hopefully to the future.

Sarawak looked very peaceful on our return; and now began the interest of the Dyak missions. From our first arrival at Kuching my husband had taken every opportunity of visiting the Dyak tribes, and sometimes a chief would come to the town with a number of his people, to pay their rice tax, or purchase clothes, tobacco, gongs, gunpowder, whatever the bazaar possessed which they valued. They brought with them beeswax, damar, honey, or rattans to exchange for those things. On these occasions the whole party came up to the mission-house to hear the harmonium, see the magic-lantern, and beg presents. At first they would ask for arrack, but finding nothing but claret to be had with us, soon left off that request. Plates and cups were always valued, and they used to say we had _so many_ more than we could possibly want in the pantry, that of course we would give them some. To their honour be it said, they never stole one, and were invariably refused, for we had not any more than we wanted. The Dyaks hung their plates in loops of rattan very ingeniously against the walls of their houses; but a plantain-leaf folded up is more often used by them in lieu of plates, and they could not have a better subst.i.tute. I never enjoyed a meal so much as some cold rice and sardines eaten off a plantain-leaf in the jungle at Lundu, after a long walk to the waterfall. The servant with the provision basket had lost his way, and as we sat hungry under the great trees at the foot of the fall, a Dyak friend produced a box of sardines and a parcel of cold rice, and divided it amongst us. When at last the basket of cold chickens arrived we handed them over to the Dyaks, feeling quite superior to such civilized food.

The Lundu Dyak chief was a great friend and admirer of Sir James Brooke from his first arrival in the country. He and his tribe were the determined enemies of the pirates, and with the Balows of the Batang Lupar braved the Sarebas and Sakarrans, even when they were most powerful. At the pirate fight of 1849 the Lundu chief lost two of his sons: they were killed by an ambush set by Lingi the Sarebas chief. Only one son, Callon, remained, and he was not his father's favourite. Poor old Orang Kaya! it was a terrible trial, and nearly brought him to his grave. Some time afterwards, he and Callon were at Sarawak to pay their tax. Lingi, who had then submitted to the Rajah, had been in Sarawak for some days, professedly to trade, but really to see if he could not take Sir James Brooke's head. This was prevented by the watchfulness of the Malays, who, suspecting Lingi, never let him get near the Rajah when they sat talking after dinner, as was the custom in those days. So Lingi went away foiled, and the day they dropped down the river the Lundus heard of it. Revenge seemed ready at hand: they had a fast boat, were a large party, and brave to a man. They entreated the Rajah to let them follow Lingi and take his head--never again would they take a head, only Lingi's, the Rajah's enemy and their own. Of course they were refused, and it must have been a terrible strain on their affection and fealty to the Rajah, not in this instance to follow the traditions of their ancestors, and gratify their personal revenge by killing a traitor. But they obeyed, and Lingi got safely back to Sarebas, little knowing how narrowly he escaped. The old Lundu chief was a Christian before he died.

He always professed a desire to be of the same religion and brother to the white man, but when, after due instruction, his son and grandson came to Kuching to be baptized, he was not well enough to accompany them, Mr. Gomes promised to baptize him on their return; but when that event took place Orang Kaya was dead, gone where, no doubt, the will was taken for the deed, as he was a Christian at heart. Mr. Gomes was from Bishop's College, Calcutta. Soon after he came to us, in 1852, he went to Lundu and remained there until 1867, when his children requiring more education than he could give them at a Dyak station, he went to Singapore, and accepted the post of missionary priest there.

Mr. Grant was Government resident at Lundu, and the ruler and missionary devoted themselves to the improvement of the people. In 1855, when we returned to our home after our first visit to England, we received a delightful visit from Mr. Gomes and twelve Dyaks, whom he brought to be baptized at St. Thomas's Church. Callon's son Langi, and half a dozen other boys, lived with Mr. Gomes, and ran after him all day--nice little fellows, who fraternized with our boys at the school-house. There were also five men, the chief of whom was Bulan (Moon), one of the manangs, or witch-doctors, of the tribe. These manangs, being as it were the priests of Dyak superst.i.tions, and getting their living by pretended cures, interpretations of omens and the voices of birds, were of course the natural enemies of truth and enlightenment. Bulan, however, had tried to be an honest manang, and finding it impossible had turned with all his heart to Christianity. His brother Bugai, also a Christian, was a very intelligent person, and became catechist at Lundu.

There was also a very rich old man, Simoulin by name, who was baptized at this time. His wife had opposed his conversion with all her might; indeed, she declared she would leave him and carry half the property with her. Simoulin said quietly, "If she will she must: she is only a woman, and her judgment in the matter is not likely to be good."

Christianity had strong opponents in the women of all the Dyak tribes.

They held important parts in all the feasts, incantations, and superst.i.tions, which could not be called religion, but were based on the dread of evil spirits and a desire to propitiate them. The women encouraged head-taking by preferring to marry the man who had some of those ghastly tokens of his prowess. When Sir James Brooke forbad head-taking among the tribes in his dominions, it was the women who would row their lovers out of the rivers in their boats, and set them down on the sea-coast to find the head of a stranger. When heads were brought in, it was the women who took possession of them, decked them with flowers, put food into their mouths, sang to them, mocked them, and inst.i.tuted feasts in honour of the slayers. The young Dyak woman works hard; she helps in all the labours of sowing, planting out, weeding, and reaping the paddy. She beats out the rice in a wooden trough, with a long pole, or pestle. She grows the cotton for clothing, dyes and weaves it. She carries heavy burdens, and paddles her boat on the river. All these are her duties, and in performing them she quickly loses her smooth skin, bright eyes, and slender figure. It is only the young girls who can boast of any beauty, but the old women are very important personages at a seed-time or harvest festival. They dress themselves in long garments embroidered with tiny white sh.e.l.ls, representing lizards and crocodiles. With long wands in their hands, they dance, singing wild incantations. They have already prepared the food for the feast--chickens roasted in their feathers; cakes of rice, spun like vermicelli and fried in cocoa-nut oil; curries, and salads of bitter and acid leaves; sticks of small bamboo filled with pulut rice and boiled, when it turns to a jelly and is agreeably flavoured with the young bamboo. It is the women also who serve out the tuak, a spirit prepared from rice and spiced with various ingredients, tobacco being one. The men must drink at these feasts; they are very temperate generally, but on this occasion they are rather proud of being drunk and boasting the next day of a bad headache! The women urge them to drink, but do not join in the orgies, and disappear when the intoxicating stage begins. I trust that this description belongs only to the past; at any rate, we know that in those places where the missionaries have long taught, their people follow a more excellent way of rejoicing in the joy of harvest, and, after their thanksgiving service in church, pour out their offerings of rice before the altar to maintain the services, and minister to the sick and needy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A DYAK GIRL.

_Page_ 74.]

For many years, however, the women were opposed to a religion which cleared away the superst.i.tious customs which were the delight of their lives, their chief amus.e.m.e.nt and dissipation, and a means of influencing the men. It was not until the year 1864 that Mr. Gomes asked us to visit Lundu and welcome a little party of women, the first converts to the faith which their fathers and husbands had long professed. This is a long digression from the history of the Lundus' visit to Kuching in 1855, which was at the time a great event. I find the following pa.s.sage in my journal: "Every evening, before late dinner, the Lundus go up to Mr. Gomes's room to say their prayers, and sing, or rather chant, their hymns. There is something very affecting in this little service--the Dyak voices singing of Christ's second coming with His holy angels, and rejoicing that He came once before for their salvation; then praying for holy, gentle hearts to receive Him. I always feel on these occasions as if I heard these precious truths afresh when they are spoken in a tongue till lately ignorant of them. Indeed, there can scarcely be a more joyful excitement than such pa.s.sages in the life of a missionary; they are worth any sacrifice. After English morning service, Mr. Gomes has prayers in church for his Dyaks. He then instructs them in the baptismal service. This makes five daily services in church, two English, two Chinese, and one Dyak. We clothed all the candidates in a new suit of cotton garments with a bright-coloured handkerchief for their heads. It would be considered very irreverent for Easterns to uncover their heads in church. I taught the school-children to sing 'Veni, Creator Spiritus'

at this baptism, while the clergy were arranging the candidates and sponsors round the font. The font was wreathed with flowers by my children. There was quite a full church, for the Chinese Christians all came to see the Dyaks baptized, and all the English of the place were present. Mr. Gomes baptized, and my husband signed them with the cross.

They all spoke up bravely in answering to their vows: may G.o.d give them grace to keep them."

This baptism took place on Whit Sunday. On Thursday of that week, Mr.

Gomes, his Dyaks, and Frank, went off to Linga for a week to visit Mr.

Chambers, and Mr. Horsburgh at Banting, that the converts of both tribes might become friends. The Balows and Lundus had always been united in their efforts against the pirate tribes, and in their fealty to the Rajah's Government. On this account they had a right to the services of the first missionaries who came from England to teach Dyaks. The visit to Banting had another object besides the mutual friends.h.i.+p of the converts. A controversy had arisen in the mission about the right word to be used in translations for _Jesus_. Isa is the name the Malays use, and the Dutch translations of the Bible employ this name; but there happened to be a bad Malay man owning the name of Isa, well known to the Balows, and Mr. Chambers feared some confusion would arise in the minds of converts in applying the same name to our Lord. It was therefore necessary to have a meeting of the clergy to decide this and many other religious terms to be used in hymns, catechisms, and in general teaching, that there might be unity in the mission: it would not do to have any divisions in the camp on such a subject. There are fifty miles of sea to cross from the Sarawak River to the Batang Lupar, then a long pull from the fort at Linga up to Banting. The journey took three nights and two days.

The mission-house at Banting is most romantically placed on the crest of a hill overhanging the river about three hundred feet, and stands in a grove of beautiful fruit-trees. The view from it is enchanting. The river branches at the foot of the hill, and each branch seems to vie with the other in the tortuousness of its course through the bright green paddy-fields. About a mile off rises Mount Lesong[3] with a graceful slope, about three thousand feet, and then terminates abruptly in a rugged top. The four clergymen who met at Banting looked almost as wild as their people--wide shady hats, long staffs, long beards, not a s.h.i.+rt among the party, and but one pair of shoes, belonging to my husband, who never could walk barefooted. They spent several days together, and had much consultation about religious terms. The most intelligent of the Dyak Christians were present, as it was necessary, not only to choose words they could understand, but such as they could easily p.r.o.nounce. On Trinity Sunday there were several services in the large room of the house, for the church was not yet built. The Lingas sang their hymns with great energy to one of their own wild strains, but when they heard the Lundus' melodious chant they were ashamed to sing after them, and begged them to teach them. The Dyaks love music and verse. Mr. Gomes and Mr. Chambers wrote them hymns, and the Creed in verse, which they readily commit to memory and understand better than prose. Pictures are also used in their instruction: a parable or miracle is read, then a picture of it produced and explained, the Dyaks repeating each sentence after the teacher, to keep their attention.

[Footnote 3: _Lesong_, mortar, being mortar-shaped.]

The baptized alone join in the Litany and Holy Communion. The afternoon was spent in visiting the sick and giving medicine. Several women came to the house for instruction, and seemed to take great interest in Mr.

Chambers, teaching; but it was not until Mr. Chambers was married that any women were baptized. At breakfast the next morning came an old chief, called Tongkat Langit--the Staff of Heaven. His son Lingire was one of the most pleasing converts, and Tongkat was wavering--had not leisure at present! The necessity of forswearing the practise of head-taking deters the old men from becoming Christians: they fear to lose influence with their tribe. The little party then fixed upon the spot where the church should be built, a permanent bilian chancel to which a nave could be added when the additional room was required.

Twenty-five pounds from the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge was all the money then in hand to begin with; but very soon more was collected, and when I visited Banting in 1857 there was a lovely little church standing on the hill overlooking the village, and surrounded by beautiful trees. The walk to it from the mission-house was just like a gentleman's park, the green sward and groups of trees with lovely peeps of hill and valleys and winding streams between. Again in 1864 we went to Banting, that the Bishop might consecrate the church. The nave was then built. Every stick in the church was bilian. The white ants walked in as soon as the workmen left. In one night they carried their covered ways all over the inside of the roof, the walls, the beams, and rafters; and finding nothing they could bite, they walked out again, leaving their traces plainly marked. Since then a coloured-gla.s.s window, representing our Lord's Resurrection, has been added at the east end of the church; and, what is better far, the church is full of Dyak Christians every Sunday, and from this living Church many branches have been planted, so that the Banting Mission now includes seven stations, where there are school-churches built by the natives themselves, and many hundreds of Christian wors.h.i.+ppers.

In 1854, six years having pa.s.sed away since a little band of Sir James Brooke's friends founded the Borneo Church Mission, the funds of the Society came to an end; and the mission would have collapsed also, had not the venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts consented to become responsible for it. As the missionaries and catechists increased in number, and fresh stations were added to the church, they opened their arms wider to receive them, until they set apart 3000 a year for Borneo. Under their fostering care the mission flourished, as it could not have done under the management of any private society.