When Sir James Brooke was in England in 1847, he appealed to the two Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and also to the two great Missionary Societies--the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and the Church Missionary Society--to help him, but none of them were able to do so as they had not the funds. So a new Association, chiefly supported by his friends, was started, called the "Borneo Church Mission." This Association sent out a few missionaries, the first of whom was the Rev. F. T. McDougall, who was consecrated the first Bishop of Labuan and Sarawak in 1855.
After a few years the Borneo Church Mission flagged for lack of support, and in 1854 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts came to the rescue, and took up the work, and has ever since been responsible for the Mission Work in Borneo. My father, the Rev. W. H. Gomes, B.D., worked under Bishop McDougall as a missionary among the Dyaks of Lundu from 1852 to 1867, and I myself have worked, under Bishop Hose, as a missionary in Sarawak for seventeen years.
When McDougall arrived at Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, in 1848, the Rajah welcomed him kindly, and gave him a large piece of ground. On this site were built a church, a school house, and a house for the Bishop to live in.
Rajah Brooke was anxious that the Dyaks, who lived far from the town and had their home in the jungles, should also be taught. Both he and Bishop McDougall were sorry to think of their heathen state, and they wanted to save them from becoming converts to Mohammedanism. So they sent for more helpers from England, and these missionaries went and lived among the Dyaks in the jungles. They built their houses, churches and schools at distant up-country stations, and they won the love and esteem of the Dyaks, who came to them, not only to learn to read and write, but to listen to the wonderful "Old, Old Story" the missionaries had to tell of a God, Who loved them, and came to earth and died for them, and rose from the dead, and ascended up to Heaven, and Who wanted the whole world to learn of His love and become His faithful followers.
Among the Dyaks a large number of families live together under one roof. A small village would consist probably of one long house, in which twenty or thirty or more families live. This village house is built on posts of hard wood, which raise the floor from six to twelve feet above the ground. It is wise of them to build their houses in this way, because the ground, even on the hills, is very damp in the rainy season, and, besides this, there are snakes and scorpions and centipedes crawling about, which would trouble the Dyaks if their houses were built on the ground. Another reason for building their houses in this way is that if they live together in large numbers, high above the ground, it is not easy for their enemies to attack and overcome them.