The following week the chief of the Murut tribe arrived to support the complaint, and went with the pedlar into the shop of the principal Chinese trader in Brunei, baba Masu, who began questioning him in Malay. The man answered in a stupid manner, as if he scarcely understood him, upon which the baba turned to the pedlar and said in Hokien Chinese, “What is the use of your bringing such a fool to support your case?” The chief’s face brightened directly, and he observed, in good Chinese, “I am not such a fool, but I don’t understand Malay well.” The trader, very much surprised to be thus addressed in his own language by a Murut, made particular inquiries, and found that this was the grandson of an immigrant from Amoy, who had settled among the aborigines, and had taught his children his own language, and his eldest son marrying the daughter of an orang kaya, their son had succeeded to the chieftainship of the tribe. Subsequently, I questioned some of the Chinese pedlars who were accustomed to trade in the districts on the coast to the north of the capital, which are known by the general name of Saba, and they found there were many of the Bisayas and Muruts of Kalias, Padas, Membakut, and Patatan, who could speak Chinese very fairly, and who acknowledged their mixed descent from the Chinese and the aborigines. Wherever the former settle, they always seek wives among the people, though few comparatively have the good fortune to procure them. However, when they do, the women soon become reconciled to them as husbands, and find a manifest improvement in their condition, as the Chinese do not like to see their wives do more than the real domestic work of the house, performing all the more laborious duties themselves, even to cooking the dinner. My friend, the orang kaya of the village of Blimbing, on the Limbang, said he remembered the Chinese living at a place called Batang Parak, about eighty miles from the mouth of the river. He himself could only call to mind seven who were cultivating pepper-plantations in his time, but his father had told him that before the insurrection the whole country was covered with their gardens. Of this insurrection, I could obtain few particulars, though they pointed out a hill at the mouth of the Madalam where the Chinese had built a fort, but had been defeated by the Bornean forces. A hundred and fifty miles up the Limbang, on the banks of the Madihit branch, and beyond all the worst rapids, the Muruts told us the Chinese formerly had very extensive pepper-plantations; but within the remembrance of their oldest men, they had all died away, no new recruits joining them, and their descendants were lost among the surrounding tribes.