d with precious stones and
worth more than all the other possessions of its owner put together.

The kris, too, has its etiquette. It is always worn on the left side
stuck into the folds of the sarong, or skirt, the national dress of
the Malay. During an interview it is considered respectful to conceal
it; and its handle is turned with its point close to the body of the
wearer, if the wearer be friendly. If, however, there is ill blood
existing, and the wearer is angry, the kris is exposed, and the point
of the handle turned the reverse way.

The kris as a weapon of offence and defence is now almost a thing
of the past. It is rapidly going the way of the tomahawk and the
boomerang--into the collector's cabinet. There is a law in Singapore
that forbids its being worn, and outside of Johore and the native
states it is seldom seen. It is still used as an executioner's knife
by the protected Sultan of Selangor, its keen point being driven
into the heart of the victim; but in a few years that practice, too,
will be abolished by the humane intervention of the English government.

It is to be hoped that the record of the kris is not as bad as it
has been painted by some, and that at times in its bloody career it
has been on the side of justice and right. The part it took in the
piracy that once made the East Indian seas so famous was not always
done for the sake of gain, but often for revenge and for independence.

THE WHITE RAJAH OF BORNEO

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