EVENTS IN THE SAGO RIVERS—THE RAJAH PROCEEDS TO ENGLAND—CORDIAL RECEPTION—FIRST PARALYTIC STROKE—BUYS BURRATOR—TROUBLES IN SARAWAK—LOYALTY OF THE POPULATION—THE RAJAH RETURNS TO BORNEO—SETTLES MUKA AFFAIRS WITH SULTAN—INSTALLS CAPTAIN BROOKE AS HEIR APPARENT—AGAIN LEAVES FOR ENGLAND—SARAWAK RECOGNISED BY ENGLAND—LIFE AT BURRATOR—SECOND AND THIRD ATTACKS OF PARALYSIS—HIS DEATH AND WILL The insurrection over, and all his absent officers returned from England, the Rajah had more time for the rest he required; but no sooner had a little calm been restored to him, than he was strongly moved by the news of the Mutiny in India. ‘He turned clammy with agitation when he first heard of it’; and how true is the ring of the following—‘I felt then, annoyed and disgraced though I have been, that I was an Englishman, and the ties and feelings which men have wantonly outraged are planted too deep to be torn up.’ Though it is highly probable that the many changes which had taken place in the management of the army in India had conduced to the Mutiny, by separating the officers from their men, and weakening the dependence of the soldiers on their superiors in order to concentrate everything in the hands of the War Department at Calcutta or elsewhere, yet one of its causes was the great increase in the number of married officers, who were completely out of touch with the native element, and heard nothing of what was going on among the men in the regiment. A little later the Rajah wrote to his nephew, Captain Brooke: ‘I have sometimes thought that since the earlier days the bonds of sympathy between the native and European have been slacker.’ These words reflected the thoughts which had arisen in my own mind during the visit I paid to Sarawak in 1857. It was not so much that there was any outward sign of the mutual sympathy being less, but there was little of that old familiar intercourse which undoubtedly produced and fostered it. And this, ungallant as the opinion may seem, I put down to the presence of the ladies. After dinner they retired to the drawing-room, and we could hear music and singing going on, and most of the gentlemen were eager to join them. The native chiefs, and others who had continued their evening visits, soon became aware of this, and gradually they frequented Government House less and less, and finally ceased going except when business called them there. Under these conditions the same intimate friendship could not continue. I have been so long absent from Sarawak that I know but little of the present state of affairs there, but I fear that the former easy intercourse was never wholly re-established, and that those pleasant evenings with the best class of natives are things of the distant past, in fact, of the days of the old Rajah.