"The Sultan AHAMAT had one daughter, who was remarkably beautiful. It came to pass that a Sheriff named ALLI, a descendant of AMIR HASSAN (_one of the grandchildren of the prophet_) came from the country of Taif to Brunai. Hearing of the fame of the beauty of the Sultan's daughter, he became enamoured of her and the Sultan accepted him as his son-in-law and the Government of Brunai was handed over to him by His Highness and he was styled Sultan BERKAT. He enforced the Code of Laws of the beloved of God and erected a mosque in Brunai, and, moreover, ordered the Chinese population to make a stone fort." The connection of the Chinese with Brunai was an important event in Borneo history and it was certainly to them that the flourishing condition of the capital when visited by PIGAFETTA in 1521 was due. They were the sole planters of the pepper gardens, the monopoly of the trade in the produce of which the East India Company negotiated for in 1774, when the crop was reported to the Company to have been 4,000 pikuls, equal to about 240 tons, valued on the spot at 17-1/4 Spanish dollars per pikul. The Company's Agent expressly reported that the Chinese were the only pepper planters, that the aborigines did not plant it, and that the produce was disposed of to Chinese junks, which visited the port and which he trusted would, when the exclusive trade in this article was in the hands of the Company, be diverted from Brunai to Balambangan. The station at this latter island, as already mentioned, was abandoned in 1775, and the English trade with Brunai appears soon afterwards to have come to an end. From extracts from the Journal of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences published in _The British North Borneo Herald_ of the 1st October, 1886, the first mention of Brunai in Chinese history appears to be in the year 669, when the King of Polo, which is stated to be another name for Bunlai (corruption of "Brunai"), sent an envoy to Pekin, who came to Court with the envoy of Siam. Again, in the year 1406, another Brunai envoy was appointed, who took with him a tribute of the products of the country, and the chronicle goes on to say that it is reported "that the present King is a man from Fukien, who followed CHENG HO when he went to this country and who settled there." This account was written in 1618 and alludes to the Chinese shipping then frequenting Brunai. It is by some supposed that the northern portion of Borneo was the destination of the unsuccessful expedition which KUBLAI KHAN sent out in the year 1292.