and it was while smoking our cigars in the evening that the natives, as well as the Chinese who had become settlers, used to drop in, and, after creeping up according to their custom, and touching the hand of their European rajah, retire to the further end of the room, and squat down upon their haunches, remain a couple of hours without uttering a word, and then creep out again. I have seen sixty or seventy of an evening come in and make this sort of salaam. All the Malays were armed; and it is reckoned an insult for one of them to appear before a rajah without his kris. I could not help remarking the manly, independent bearing of the half-savage and nearly naked mountain Dyak compared with the sneaking deportment of the Malay. The following little adventure was told me during my stay at Sarawak, by Dr. Treacher, who had lately joined Mr. Brooke, his former medical attendant having returned to England. It appears that Dr. Treacher received a message by a confidential slave that one of the ladies of Macota's harem desired an interview, appointing a secluded spot in the jungle as the rendezvous. The doctor, being aware of his own good looks, fancied he had made a conquest, and, having got himself up as showily as he could, was there at the appointed time. He described the poor girl as both young and pretty, but with a dignified and determined look, which at once convinced him that she was moved to take so dangerous a step by some deeper feeling than that of a mere fancy for his person. She complained of the ill treatment she had received from Macota, and the miserable life she led, and avowed that her firm resolve was to destroy (not herself, gentle creature! but) him; for which purpose she wanted a small portion of arsenic. It was a disappointment that he could not comply with her request; so they parted--he full of pity and love for her, and she, in all probability, full of contempt for a man who felt for her wrongs, but would not aid in the very simple means she had proposed for redressing them.