BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC
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very small, and rises but some fifteen to twenty miles inland. Where the town is, the river is very broad, forming a large lake. The town is commanded by hills once under cultivation; on an island at the mouth of the entrance are the shattered remains of an old Portuguese fort, which was still standing, though ruinous, when Hunt visited the place in 1809. The town itself has been designated the "Venice of Borneo" by old writers, a description to which the Italian Beccari rightly objected,* and is mainly built on piles driven into the mud on a shallow in the middle of the lake, the houses occupying wooden platforms elevated some ten feet above the reach of the tide. Communication between them is effected by canoes, in which the women daily go through the town selling provisions. It is, in a word, similar to the palafitte villages found in prehistoric times in the lakes of Switzerland and Lombardy. A part of the town, including the houses of the Sultan and the wazirs, is situated on the left bank of the river. It is the Brunei of Pigafetta's time, though sadly reduced in size and importance. Then the Sultan's palace was enclosed by a strong brick wall,† with barbicans mounting fifty-six cannon, now it is but a roughly built barn-like shed. Gone are the richly caparisoned elephants, and gone too is all the old pride, pomp, and panoply, including the spoons of gold, which particularly struck the old voyager.§ Brunei has no defences now, but, at the period of which we are writing, there were batteries planted on each side of the inlet commanding the approach, also two forts on the heights, and one battery on a
* "I admit that Bruni has its points, but what irony to compare for a moment the city of marble palaces with the mass of miserable huts which a single match could easily reduce to ashes." The Rajah called the place a "Venice of hovels." Mercator in his Atlas describes it as "being situated on a salt-water lagoon like Venice," hence probably it became known as the Venice of Borneo.
† Kota batu, stone fort. The name still remains. It was built towards the close of the fifteen century by Sherip Ali, the first Arab Sultan, with the aid of the Chinese subjects his wife's mother had brought to Bruni. The city was then nearer the mouth of the river. It was moved to its present position by Sultan Muadin about 200 years ago.
§ The Portuguese Jorge de Menezes, who visited Bruni five years after Pigafetta, notices that the city was surrounded with a wall of brick, and possessed some noble edifices. Other early voyagers describe the sultans and rulers of Malayan States as maintaining great style, and their equipments, such as swords of state, saddles, chairs, eating and drinking utensils as being of pure gold. Allowing for some exaggeration, this would still point to a former condition of prosperity which enabled rulers and nobles to keep up a pageantry which has long since vanished.