Produced by Ronald Lee BORNEO AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. London: SPOTTISWOODE AND SHAW, New-street Square. [Illustration: CHINESE JOSS HOUSE. F. M. DELT. M. N. HANHART LITH. PRINTERS LONDON; LONGMAN & CO. 1848] [Illustration: (Transcriber's Note: No caption in original text--Picture shows a Bornean ship with the book title, author's name and publisher printed on the sails and hull.) F. M. DELT. M. N. HANHART LITH. PRINTERS] BORNEO AND THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO. WITH DRAWINGS OF COSTUME AND SCENERY. BY FRANK S. MARRYAT, LATE MIDSHIPMAN OF H. M. S. SAMARANG, SURVEYING VESSEL. LONDON: LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS, PATERNOSTER-ROW. 1848. INTRODUCTION. I wish the readers of these pages to understand that it has been with no desire to appear before the public as an author that I have published this Narrative of the Proceedings of Her Majesty's ship Samarang during her last Surveying Cruise. During the time that I was in the ship, I made a large collection of drawings, representing, I hope faithfully, the costumes of the natives and the scenery of a country so new to Europeans. They were considered, on my return, as worthy to be presented to the public, as being more voluminous and more characteristic than drawings made in haste usually are. I may here observe, that it has been a great error on the part of the Admiralty, considering the great expense incurred in fitting out vessels for survey, that a little additional outlay is not made in supplying every vessel with a professional draughtsman, as was invariably the case in the first vessels sent out on discovery. The duties of officers in surveying vessels are much too fatiguing and severe to allow them the time to make anything but hasty sketches, and they require that practice with the pencil without which natural talent is of little avail; the consequence is, that the engravings, which have appeared in too many of the Narratives of Journeys and Expeditions, give not only an imperfect, but even an erroneous, idea of what they would describe. A hasty pencil sketch, from an unpractised hand, is made over to an artist to reduce to proportion; from him it passes over to the hand of an engraver, and an interesting plate is produced by their joint labours. But, in this making up, the character and features of the individual are lost, or the scenery is composed of foliage not indigenous to the country, but introduced by the artist to make a good picture. In describing people and countries hitherto unknown, no description given by the pen will equal one correct drawing. How far I may have succeeded must be decided by those who have, with me, visited the same places and mixed with the people delineated. How I found time to complete the drawings is explained by my not doing any duty on board at one time, and at another by my having been discharged into the hospital-ship at Hong Kong.