Afterwards Admiral Sir Arthur Farquhar, K. C. B. He died in 1908, aged ninety-three.
Beting Maru is the name of a long sand-spit running into the sea between the Kalaka and Saribas rivers off the Maru river.
This same Linggir in 1845 attempted to murder the Rajah and his officers and other English guests whilst at dinner in the Rajah's house at Kuching. He marched into the dining-room with eighty armed men, pretending to pay a friendly visit. The Rajah and his guests adopted the only policy open to them, and pretended as well to be friendly, for they were completely at the mercy of the Dayaks. They entertained their unwelcome guests with wine and cigars whilst waiting for the Datus, to whom the Rajah had contrived covertly to send a message. The Datu Temanggong arrived first with thirty men, and then came the Datu Bandar with fifty men. The Datus wished to kill Linggir for his intended treachery, the Rajah, however, spared him, perhaps unwisely, but he had to slink away to his boat with a flea in his ear. He had actually brought with him a basket to contain the Rajah's head. He afterwards became a peaceable citizen, and very friendly to the white men.
These unfortunate girls, and those taken at Matu, were barbarously murdered by the pirates to prevent their being rescued.
Or better, Mashhor, an Arabic word meaning illustrious.
Mr. W. Brereton first came to Sarawak in the _Samarang_, as a midshipman, in 1843. In 1848 he left the Navy and joined the Rajah. He was first stationed at Labuan. He was only twenty years of age when appointed to take charge of Sekrang.
The Sekrangs lost heavily at the battle of Beting Maru.
To show how these charges were supported by wilful and gross exaggerations, that could only have been made for the express purpose of deceiving the public, and which were as ridiculous as they were mischievous, Hume stated that it was doubtful whether a portion of the Royal Navy of China, which was reported to be off the coast at the time for the purpose of making peace with these people (the Saribas and Sekrangs), had not been destroyed by the expedition!
Keppel, _Voyage to the Indian Archipelago_.
The important fact that in all their marauding expeditions the Saribas and Sekrang Dayaks were mixed up with the Malays of the Saribas and Batang Lupar, who not only commanded and led them, but accompanied them in large numbers seems to have been quite overlooked by both the Rajah's accusers and his supporters. This in itself is a sufficient indication of the piratical nature of these expeditions. The character of these Malays as pirates was at least beyond question, and to assert that they went with these poor "harmless and timid" Dayaks to assist them in their intertribal feuds would be a very wide stretch of imagination. We have shown that the force routed on Beting Maru was led by Malays.