A Decade in Borneo, Ada Pryer, 1894

• Brunei, #1
• Free from the Internet Archive
• Read January 2019
• Rating: 2.5/5

I already wrote about A Decade in Borneo in my post on Brunei, but I took notes while I was reading for once and I wanted to share them with you, because I am too lazy about writing this blog to let any work I’ve actually done languish unposted. So these are the extremely valuable nuggets of information I gleaned from my reading, way back in the heady, innocent days of 2019:

1. At one time Borneo was believed (at least by the author of this book) to be the biggest island in the world. I had to look that one up; it’s pretty big, more than three times the size of Great Britain, but it’s now considered the third-biggest island in the world. Australia doesn’t count, apparently, because it’s a continent (I don’t know who makes these rules, but that’s what Wikipedia says). Greenland is the biggest, followed by New Guinea, and then Borneo. New Guinea, I know, was largely unknown to Westerners until just before World War II, but I have to wonder—did people at the turn of the 20th century just not know how big Greenland was?
   
2. Pirates are not as much fun as Hollywood would have you believe.
   
3. There’s a lot to parse in this weird sentence: “To illustrate the ease with which the most terrible wounds heal amongst these rice-eating temperate people, it may be mentioned that on one occasion after one of the numerous skirmishes with them, one of W.’s men was brought in with a wound reaching from the shoulder to the thigh, in the whole length of which the hand and arm might have been laid; with care and attention, however, this man quite recovered and was all right again in a few weeks.” Graphic! And also vague! And also, is the phrase “rice-eating temperate people” related in any way to the rest of the sentence? Does she attribute their remarkable healing powers to their rice-eating? And does temperance describe their mode of being? It must, since the climate is undeniably tropical. Does she mean temperate in the sense of not imbibing alcohol? Is she casting shade on the hard-drinking British—”look, if we drank less beer and ate more rice, we too could recover from relatively serious flesh wounds in a matter of weeks”?
   
4. The British empire apparently found it expedient to send Somali troops (conscripts? slaves?) from Somalia, to Singapore, and on to Borneo, where they acted as constables. According to Wikipedia, the police force of North Borneo in 1887 consisted of 3 Europeans, 50 Indians, 30 Dayaks (one of Borneo’s indigenous peoples), 50 Somalis, and 20 Malays. I cannot find any information about this anywhere. Pryer mentions it casually, as if, of course the occupied people of one colonized nation would be sent across the world to keep the peace in another. Theoretically the British were all about “abolishing slavery” at this time; their stated intention in occupying Somalia was to eradicate the slave trade…but did these fifty Somali policemen end up in Borneo strictly of their own free will? I have my doubts.
   
5. A barong, which is an article of dress in the Philippines, is a type of weapon in Borneo (and apparently, upon further research, in Filipino Muslim culture as well, which makes me think the two uses of the word are likely to have arisen from a common root, but I can’t find any sources about that). There is also a mythological figure named Barong in Balinese culture. He’s the king of the spirits and he looks like a lion. That is perhaps not strictly relevant here.
   
6. Borneo is home to a native species of rhinoceros (the Sumatran rhinoceros), although there are only ten individuals left on the entire island.
   
7. Children’s proclivity for undressing knows no cultural bounds; Pryer writes that “as a rule, in this warm climate it is very difficult to get children to keep any clothes on” (although I’m not sure the climate has anything to do with it; my two-year-old will undress herself at any opportunity, even if it’s 50 degrees and raining).*
   
8. The incredibly valuable 19th century bird’s-nest trade (a picul—i.e., a shoulder-load—of birds’ nests was worth $1200 in 1892—that’s over $40,000 in today’s money) was centered around some caves in northern Borneo, which were hotly contested territory, but since only one small group of people actually had the knowledge and skills to collect the nests from high up in the caves, they managed to retain something of a monopoly. Even today, there are two cave systems in this region that are still used for the harvest of edible swift nests, and there are still only a few people who are qualified to collect them.
   
9. Not a new piece of knowledge exactly, but once again I am amazed and disheartened at the descriptions of the abundance of plant and animal life before European colonization. Pryer describes an “inexhaustible supply” of rock oysters lying in the shallow water, ready for collection; a small hunting party kills five wild pigs in a single day; a man goes out fishing in a canoe and comes back with thirteen small sharks.
   
10. The following animals exist: moonrat, spiny rat, pygmy squirrel (which is as adorable as you might predict).
    
11. Pearl oysters in the Sulu archipelago were “the size of pie plates” and valued at £40 per ton (though pearls themselves were rare). These were, presumably, Pinctada maxima, the Philippine pearl oyster, which is the largest known species of pearl-producing oyster.

*I don’t have a two-year-old anymore; the child about whom I wrote this is now a second-grader, and since then I’ve had a second child who is also over two. However, both of them are still difficult to keep clothed, so I guess the point still stands.