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remarkable strength of its little fingers and toes, which catch hold of anything with the firmness of a vice. About a week ago I bought a little monkey with a long tail, and as the baby was very lonely while we were out in the daytime, I put the little monkey into the cradle to keep it warm. Perhaps you will say that this was not proper. 'How could you do such a thing?' But, I assure you, the baby likes it exceedingly, and they are excellent friends. When the monkey wants to run away, as he often does, the baby clutches him by the tail or ears and drags him back; and if the monkey does succeed in escaping, screams violently till he is brought back again. Of course, baby cannot walk yet, but I let it crawl about on the floor to exercise its limbs; but it is the most wonderful baby I ever saw, and has such strength in its arms that it will catch hold of my trousers as I sit at work, and hang under my legs for a quarter of an hour at a time without being the least tired, all the time trying to suck, thinking, no doubt, it has got hold of its poor dear mother. When it finds no milk is to be had, there comes another scream, and I have to put it back in its cradle and give it 'Toby'-the little monkey-to hug, which quiets it immediately. From this short account you will see that my baby is no common baby, and I can safely say, what so many have said before with much less truth, 'There never was such a baby as my baby,' and I am sure nobody ever had such a dear little duck of a darling of a little brown hairy baby before."

In a letter dated Christmas Day, 1855, I gave my impressions of the Dyaks, and of Sir James Brooke, as follows:

"I have now lived a month in a Dyak's house, and spent a day or two in several others, and I have been very much pleased with them. They are a very kind, simple, hospitable people, and I do not wonder at the great interest Sir James Brooke takes in them. They are more communicative and more cheerful than the American Indians, and it is therefore more agreeable to live with them. In moral character they are far superior to either the Malays or the Chinese, for though head-taking was long a custom among

In their own villages

them, it was only as a trophy of war. crimes are very rare. Ever since Sir James Brooke has been rajah, more than twelve years, there has only been one case of murder in a Dyak tribe, and that was committed by a stranger who had been adopted into the tribe. One wet day I produced a piece of string to show them how to play 'cat's cradle,' and was quite astonished to find that they knew it much better than I did, and could make all sorts of new figures I had never seen. They were also very clever at tricks with string on their fingers, which seemed to be a favourite amusement. Many of the remoter tribes think the rajah cannot be a man. They ask all sorts of curious questions about him-Whether he is not as old as the mountains; whether he cannot bring the dead to life; and I have no doubt, for many years after his death, he will be held to be a deity and expected to come back again.

"I have now seen a good deal of Sir James, and the more I see of him the more I admire him. With the highest talents for government he combines in a high degree goodness of heart and gentleness of manner. At the same time, he has so much self-confidence and determination that he has put down with the greatest ease the conspiracies of one or two of the Malay chiefs against him. It is a unique case in the history of the world for a private English gentleman to rule over two conflicting races—a superior and an inferior -with their own consent, without any means of coercion, but depending solely upon them both for protection and support, while at the same time he introduces some of the best customs of civilization, and checks all crimes and barbarous practices that before prevailed. Under his government 'running-a-muck,' so frequent in other Malay countries, has never taken place, and in a population of about 30,000 Malays, almost all of whom carry their kris, and were accustomed to revenge an insult with a stab, murders only occur once in several years. The people are never taxed except with their own consent, and in the manner most congenial to them, while almost the whole of the rajah's private fortune has been spent in the improvement of the country or for its

benefit. Yet this is the man who has been accused in England of wholesale murder and butchery of unoffending tribes to secure his own power!"

In my next letter (from Singapore in February, 1856) I say "I have now left Sarawak, where I began to feel quite at home, and may perhaps never return to it again, but I shall always look back with pleasure to my residence there and to my acquaintance with Sir James Brooke, who is a gentleman and a nobleman in the truest and best sense of those words."

At the end of this letter I make some remarks on the Crimean War, then almost concluded, and though I afterwards saw reason to change my opinion as regards this particular war, my views then as to the menace of Russian power to civilization are not altogether inapplicable at the present day. I say "The warlike stores found in Sebastopol are alone a sufficient justification of the war. For what purpose were four thousand cannon and other stores in proportion accumulated there for if not to take Constantinople, get a footing in the Mediterranean, and ultimately to subjugate Europe? And why do such tremendous fortresses exist in every part of the frontiers of Russia, if not to render herself invulnerable from the attacks which she has determined by her ambitious designs to bring upon her? Russia is perpetually increasing her means both of defence and of aggression; if she had continued unmolested for a few years longer, it would have cost still greater sacrifices to subdue her. The war, therefore, is absolutely necessary as the only means of teaching Russia that Europe will not submit to the indefinite increase of her territory and power, and the constant menace of her thousands of cannons and millions of men. It is the only means of saving Europe from a despotism as much worse than that of Napoleon as the Russian people are behind the French in civilization."

There is a certain amount of truth in this, but to avoid misconception I wish to state that I think the danger does not arise from the Russian Government being any worse than our own, or than the Governments of Germany or

France. All have the same insatiable craving for extending their territories and ruling subject peoples for the benefit of their own upper classes. Russia is only the most dangerous because she is already so vast, and each fresh extension of her territory adds to her already too large population, from which to create enormous armies, which she can and will use for further aggrandizement. It is a disgrace to Europe that they have allowed Russia to begin the dismemberment of China, and to leave to Japan the tremendous task of putting a check to her progress.

A later letter from Singapore touches on two matters of some interest. "I quite enjoy being a short time in Singapore again. The scene is at once so familiar and yet so strange. The half-naked Chinese coolies, the very neat shopkeepers, the clean, fat, old, long-tailed merchants, all as pushing and full of business as any Londoners. Then the handsome, darkskinned klings from southern India, who always ask double what they will take, and with whom it is most amusing to bargain. The crowd of boatmen at the ferry, a dozen begging and disputing for a farthing fare; the tall, well-dressed Armenians; the short, brown Malays in their native dress; and the numerous Portuguese clerks in black, make up a scene doubly interesting to me now that I know something about them, and can talk to them all in the common language of the place-Malay. The streets of Singapore on a fine day are as crowded and busy as Tottenham Court Road, and from the variety of nationalities and occupations far more interesting. I am more convined than ever that no one can appreciate a new country by a short visit. After two years in the East I only now begin to understand Singapore, and to thoroughly appreciate the life and bustle, and the varied occupations of so many distinct nationalities on a spot which a short time ago was an uninhabited jungle. A volume might be written upon it without exhausting its humours and its singularities. . . .

"I have been spending three weeks with my old friend the French Jesuit missionary at Bukit Tima, going daily into

the jungle, and every Friday fasting on omelet and vegetables, a most wholesome custom, which the Protestants erred in leaving off. I have been reading Huc's 'Travels' in French, and talking a good deal with one of the missionaries just arrived from Tonquin, who can speak no English. I have thus obtained a good deal of information about these countries, and about the extent of the Catholic missions in them, which is really astonishing. How is it that they do their work so much more thoroughly than most Protestant missions? In Cochin China, Tonquin, and China, where Christian missionaries are obliged to live in secret, and are subject to persecution, expulsion, or death, every province, even those farthest in the interior of China, has its regular establishment of missionaries constantly kept up by fresh supplies, who are all taught the languages of the countries they are going to at Penang or Singapore. In China there are near a million of Catholics, in Tonquin and Cochin China more than half a million. One secret of their success is their mode of living. Each missionary is allowed about £30 a year, on which he lives in whatever country he may be. This has two good results. A large number of missionaries can be kept on limited funds, and the people of the country in which they reside, seeing that they live in poverty and with none of the luxuries of life, are convinced that they are sincere. Most of them are Frenchmen, and those I have seen or heard of are well-educated men, who give up their lives to the good of the people they live among. No wonder they make converts, among the lower orders principally; for it must be a great blessing to these poor people to have a man among them to whom they can go in any trouble or distress, whose sole object is to advise and help them, who visits them in sickness and relieves them in want, and whom they see living in continual danger of persecution and death only for their benefit."

Before leaving Singapore I wrote a long letter to my old fellow traveller and companion, Henry Walter Bates, then collecting on the Upper Amazon, almost wholly devoted to

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