indifference of the Dyaks. The Bishop was
once accused, by a person who ought to have known better, that he was
too apt to gather his clergy at Sarawak and keep them from their Dyak
parishes: but it was a necessary part of the Bishop's work to keep a
home where the missionaries could come for change and refreshment; where
they could enjoy a more generous diet, and the society of English
friends; where they could consult a medical man, and get some hints how
to treat the maladies of the Dyaks--for they expected all the
missionaries to know the art of healing, having had more or less
experience of the Bishop's skill. Mr. Hacket was consumptive, but
Sarawak is the best climate in the world for that disease: he got much
stronger with us, and might have lived many years there, but he was too
nervous for so unsettled a country. We were often subjected to panics
for many months after the Chinese insurrection, and though we old
inhabitants took it very easily, Mr. Hacket always thought his wife and
child in danger. I remember, one day a Malay was being tried in the
court-house, when he, by a sudden spring, escaped from the police, and
snatching a sword from a bystander, ran amuck through the bazaar,
wounding two or three people he met. The hue and cry in the town fired
the imaginations of the timid. People came running to the house for
shelter, bringing their goods and chattels, and all sorts of tales--"The
Chinese were coming from Sambas," and all sorts of nonsense. Then, Mrs.
Hacket fainting on the sofa, and the servants all leaving their work to
listen, and look out of the verandah, provoked us extremely: we
administered sal volatile and a good scolding, and sent everybody off to
their business again. But those scenes were very trying to the nerves.
That a Malay should run amuck (amok, in Malay) with anger or jealousy,
or a fit of madness arising from both these passions, was an occasional
event all through our Sarawak life, but it was no more alarming in 1858
than in former years. It was the breach in the general feeling of
security under the Sarawak Government, which for a time magnified every
little disturbance of the peace into a public danger.

Our school was enriched this year by, first, seven new Chinese boys,
then four more and four girls, the captives of the Lundu Dyaks, ransomed
by Captain Brooke. Those children were, some of them, miserable objects,
covered with sores from neglect. One boy had been set to carry red