but
this does not appear to have been collected in the Limbang. Sir SPENCER
ST. JOHN, writing in 1856, gives, in his "Life in the Forests of the Far
East," several instances of the grievous oppression practiced on the
Limbang people. Amongst others he mentions how a native, in a fit of
desperation, had killed an extortionate tax-gatherer. Instead of having
the offender arrested and punished, the Sultan ordered his village to be
attacked, when fifty persons were killed and an equal number of women
and children were made prisoners and kept as slaves by His Highness. The
immediate cause of the rebellion to which I am now referring was the
extraordinary extortion practised by one of the principal Ministers of
State. The revenues of his office were principally derived from the
Limbang River and, as the Sultan was very old, he determined to make the
best possible use of the short time remaining to him to extract all he
could from his wretched feudatories. To aid him in his design, he
obtained, with the assistance of the British North Borneo Company, a
steam launch, and the Limbang people subsequently pointed out to me this
launch and complained bitterly that it was with the money forced out of
them that this means of oppressing them had been purchased. He then
employed the most unscrupulous agents he could discover, imposed
outrageous fines for trifling offences, and would even interfere if he
heard of any private disputes among the villagers, adjudicate unasked in
their cases, taking care always to inflict a heavy fine which went, not
to the party aggrieved, but into his own pocket. If the fines could not
be paid, and this was often the case, owing to their being purposely
fixed at such a high rate, the delinquent's sago plantations--the
principal wealth of the people in the Limbang River--would be
confiscated and became the private property of the Minister, or of some
of the members of his household. The patience of the people was at
length exhausted, and they remembered that the Brunai nobles could no
longer call in the Kayans to enforce their exactions, that tribe having
become subjects to Raja BROOKE. About the month of August, 1884, two of
the Minister's messengers, or tax collectors, who were engaged in the
usual process of squeezing the people, were fired on and killed by the
Bisayas, the principal pagan tribe in the river. The Tumonggong
determined to punish this outrage in person and probably thought his
august pres