But the Rajah did not thus conclude his own career; he returned to Sarawak and devoted all his energies to the development of his adopted country, and of the neighbouring districts. I shall have to relate what extraordinary vicissitudes of fortune he had to encounter, and how after many years of conflict he emerged triumphant, to leave to his successor, Sir Charles Brooke, a small kingdom, well organised as far as Sarawak was concerned, with strongly established positions reaching to Bintulu, which have but increased in influence and in power to further the well-being of the natives of every race and class; and to prove to all who care to interest themselves in the subject, what a gain to humanity has resulted from the old Rajah having had the courage and the forethought to found his rule in a wild country, whose inhabitants, with few exceptions, were till then inimical to Europeans, and mostly tainted by piracy. But he argued truly that these people knew very imperfectly what Englishmen were, and he determined to show them that some, at all events, were worthy of their confidence, and could devote themselves without reserve to their welfare. The peculiarity of the Rajah’s system was to treat the natives, as far as possible, as equals; not only equals before the law, but in society. All his followers endeavoured to imitate their chief, and succeeded in a greater or less degree, thus producing a state of good feeling in the country which was probably found nowhere else in the East, except in Perak, one of the Protected States in the Malay Peninsula, into which one of his most able assistants introduced his method of government. I am told that this good feeling, if not the old friendly intimacy between native and European, still exists to a considerable degree throughout the possessions of the present Rajah, which is highly honourable to him and to his officers. I have not attempted to re-write my account of the Chinese Insurrection (see Chapter VI.). I wrote it when all the events were fresh in my mind, and no subsequent information has rendered it necessary to make any changes. It was a most interesting and important incident in the Rajah’s career, and it fixed for ever in the minds of his countrymen how wise and beneficent must have been his rule of the Malays and Dyaks, that they should have stood by him as they did when he appeared before them as a defeated fugitive. How far-seeing were the Rajah’s views and plans is proved by the fact that his successor has found it unnecessary to change any phase of his policy, whether political or commercial, whether financial, agricultural or judicial; with the growth of the country in population and wealth all has been of course considerably augmented, but the lines on which this great advance has been made were laid by the first Rajah, and that this honour is due to him no one should deny.