Journal (from 29th April to 25th May, 1872) when on a trip from Sarawak to Meri, on the north-west coast of Borneo in the Brunei territory
N. Denison’s journal, published in 1882 in the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, records a twenty-six-day voyage along the north-west Borneo coast in May 1872, from the Sarawak settlement at Oya through the Brunei-claimed Meri and Baram rivers to Sibu and Kuching. The text functions simultaneously as a colonial trade report, an ethnographic survey of the Milano, Kayan, Dayak, Murut, and Dusun peoples, and a window into the administrative friction between the White Rajah’s Sarawak and the Sultanate of Brunei in the period immediately following their 1870 treaty.
Summary
Denison’s narrative is anchored by his commercial and administrative interests in the sago trade and the political economy of the Baram. The central tension he documents is the encroachment of Chinese traders—many of them Sarawak-based—into the Baram river system, where they were paying Kayan headhunters $40 per pikul for gutta, undercutting the established Brunei Malay middlemen who had long monopolised the trade between the interior Kayans and the coast. Denison records a pointed exchange between his companion C—— and Brunei traders (Awang Badan and Tuan Panjano) in which the relative merits of Sarawak and Brunei governance are debated; the Brunei side accuses Sarawak of heavy fines, while C—— counters with a specific case of Pangeran Anak Chuchu levying 20 pikuls of gums (worth $2,400 in gutta) on the Panglima Baling’s village, carrying away plunder estimated at $9,000 (pp. 177–178).
The journal also serves as a detailed ethnographic record, much of it drawn from the Resident at Muka (R——) and the Resident at Oya (De C——). Denison reproduces at length their accounts of Milano religious practice (belief in a single Supreme Being called “Allah taala,” propitiation of hantus spirits, sorcery practised chiefly by women), the persistence of head-hunting and the consumption of raw hearts among Dayak and Milano warriors, human sacrifice among the Milanos prior to the Brooke cession, and the contrasting customs of the Muruts and Dusuns of northern Borneo (pp. 181–184). The sago industry at Oya receives a technical description of the Oya Trading Company’s 14-horsepower engine-driven mill, from the purchase of tree trunks at thirty cents per three-foot cut through pulping, washing, and sun-drying (pp. 185–186).
A brief military episode closes the journal: the bala (expedition) against the up-river Dayak chief Andam on the Mujok, which resulted in one enemy killed, several wounded, two Sarawak men killed, and the destruction of Dayak houses at Intiman, with the population ordered to relocate to Entabai (p. 187).
Key Findings
- The Baram river population was estimated at approximately 30,000 under four or five independent chiefs, with the upper-river Kayan chief Prang Nibut commanding about 5,000 fighting men (p. 177).
- The Meri district (including Sibuti, Nyah, and Suai) had a combined population of roughly 2,000, with territorial claims divided between Pangeran Anak Chuchu (87 doors) and Pangeran Mohamed Alam (107 doors); the latter extracted eighty catties per annum per man from the village of Luak (pp. 176–177).
- Birds’ nests from the Baram were estimated at fifty pikuls per annum, valued at $10,000 ($200 per pikul); Brunei traders’ profits on Baram trade had fallen from 400 per cent to 100 per cent due to Chinese competition, while borrowing costs at Brunei ran 2–3 per cent per month (pp. 178–179).
- The Oya Trading Company’s sago mill used a 14-horsepower engine; sago tree trunks (30–40 feet long) were sold at thirty cents per three-foot cut (krat), yielding roughly half a pasu of sago per cut (p. 185).
- The bala against Andam on the Mujok resulted in one enemy killed and several wounded, two Sarawak men killed, and the destruction of all houses at Intiman; the Dayaks were ordered to move to Entabai (p. 187).
- A young male mias (clouded leopard) shot on the Padas river measured eight feet ten inches across the span, four feet seven inches in height, and thirteen inches across the face—described by the editor as the largest ever recorded (p. 181).
Conclusion
Denison’s journal ultimately presents the Baram and Meri region as a commercially promising but politically unstable frontier, where the 1870 Brunei–Sarawak treaty had only partially curbed the exactions of local Pangerans and where Chinese competition was rapidly displacing the traditional Brunei trading network. His ethnographic material, though filtered through colonial administrative informants, preserves valuable detail on Milano, Kayan, Murut, and Dusun social customs at a moment when head-hunting, human sacrifice, and the consumption of enemy hearts were still living practices rather than historical relics.
Context
- Denison was a European resident in Sarawak with direct commercial and administrative connections to the Oya Trading Company and the Borneo Company; his account is that of a colonial insider observing both Sarawak and Brunei governance from the Sarawak side.
- The journal was published a full decade after the events it describes, in a volume of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, suggesting it was offered as a contribution to the Society’s growing corpus of Borneo ethnography and colonial history rather than as a contemporary dispatch.