"Pangeran Macota has likewise been injuring these poor people, though I shall find it difficult to bring it home to him. His agent, Bandar Dowud (a man involved in debt), took fifteen Dyak cloths and sold them, or rather forced them to take them, at an exorbitant rate; in a month or two after, he returns and demands 200 reals over and above the large price already paid for articles worth seven or eight reals; the poor Dyaks not being able to pay, he seizes the chief's daughter (a married woman), and demands four other women in lieu of the sum. Happily for the poor Dyaks, this news came to my ears, and I sent to Lundu in haste. They had all fled, having _stolen_ their two women, one from each Bandar, and carried them away. On the Patingi and Tumangong reaching Lundu, they found two of the tribe, one the Pangeran, the other the father of the girl sold to the Chinaman, after a long search in the jungle. These two men I have now with me, and wait for the Orang Kaya Tumangong before going into the case. The Pangeran is the same Dyak whose conversation I have detailed at large on my first visit to the place. He is a man of intelligence; and this tribe (if it may yet be so called) has always borne the character of being the most hospitable and generous among the Dyaks. I may at some future time revert to them.
"There is a rumor of war between the Sarebus and Sakarran Dyaks, in consequence of the former tribe seizing a Balow woman on the territory of the latter, and refusing to restore her. Let these two predatory tribes employ and weaken one another, and it will be well for us and all the other people of this country, and they will afterward be the more easily brought into subjection.
"From Borneo we have news, but as uncertain as everything else regarding the capital. A hundred vessels, it is reported, are coming to attack them; and they, in consequence, are building _a fort_. The Royalist had been there and departed.
"Pangeran Usop, it is said, was about to come here, when the arrival of the Royalist induced him to postpone his design.
"There is every reason to believe that the Chinese of Sambas, particularly those of Montrado, are extremely dissatisfied; and a report yesterday states that a man sent by the sultan to demand gold had been killed by them, and that the sultan's letter to the Kunsi, after being defiled, was publicly burned. Our own Chinese of Sipang are certainly intriguing with Sambas; and, as the rajah well expresses it, 'their clothes-box is here, but their treasure-chest is at Sambas.'