"_5th._--Sailing from Songi about 4 P.M., we directed our course for Tanjong Salanketo. The breeze was stiff, which caused us to use considerable precaution in sailing among the shoals. Assisted by a native Nacodah, by name Dain Pativi, we were enabled to keep the tortuous channel, of which otherwise we should have been ignorant. A little farther than the Tanca river is a shoal stretching from the shore, to avoid which we kept Canallo on our lee bow: this being cleared, we gradually luffed up, ran between two shoals, and passed several others." CHAPTER VII. Mr. Brooke's second visit to Sarawak.--The civil war.--Receives a present of a Dyak boy.--Excursion to the seat of war.--Notices of rivers, and settlements on their banks.--Deaths and burials.--Reasons for and against remaining at Sarawak.--Dyak visitors.--Council of war.--Why side with the Rajah.--Mode of constructing forts.--State of enemy's and Rajah's forces.--Conduct of the war. Mr. Brooke continued his cruise for some time, and made very interesting collections of natural history, beside acquiring much insight into the native history, language, and customs, his detailed remarks on which it is to be hoped he will at a future day give to the public. He then returned to Singapore, where he was detained for several months by ill health; but availed himself of the opportunity to recopper and refit the Royalist, and set everything else in order for his next visit to Sarawak, the remarkable results of which are related in the following pages. Still sick and languid though he was, the very air of Borneo, and the prospect of activity, seemed to restore him to life, after the listless rest at Singapore, with "nothing to observe;" and only cheered by the kindest attentions and hospitalities of the inhabitants of that interesting and important settlement. On the second visit of Mr. Brooke to Sarawak, about the end of August, 1840, he found the inhabitants in nearly the same state as at first, although there was much talk of reinforcements, and decisive measures for bringing the war to a close. The two parties lay within thirty miles of each other, the rebels holding the upper part of the river, and communication with the interior. The sultan, however, had sent down the Orang Kaya de Gadong to take more active measures, and his arrival stimulated Muda Hassim to something like exertion. This occurred on the fourth September, 1840, as appears by Mr. Brooke's journal, from which I shall give various extracts indicative not only of the character of my friend, whose ideas were written down at the time the impressions were made, but also supplying a distinct picture of the progress of this novel and amusing civil warfare, and demonstrating the unwarlike character of the Sarawak Borneons.