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The loyalty of the native population was thoroughly tested in the year 1857.  It was the time of the second British war against China.  Now the Chinese are in one sense the most cosmopolitan of races.  Wherever bread is to be won, or gold amassed, there they go, thus becoming scattered all through Southeastern Asia and the adjoining islands.  In one aspect they are a great blessing.  They are a most laborious and thrifty race, of almost incalculable benefit in the development of the material resources of a country.  But in some respects they are also an element of danger.  They never identify themselves with the country in which they dwell.  They simply come to get a living out of it.  They band themselves in secret societies or other exclusive organizations, and seem to get no real love for the land which gives them bread, or the people among whom they live.  Under a peaceful rule, this race had greatly multiplied at Sarawak.  Some branches of industry had indeed almost fallen into their hands.  Especially in all mining operations was their help a positive necessity.  For the Dyak, though industrious enough on his little plantation, will not work, except on compulsion, in the mines.  These places are bitter to him with the memory of forced labor and unrequited misery.  Besides, he believes that the bowels of the earth are filled with demons, and no amount of pay gives him courage to face these.  As a result, the conduct of the mines was left to the Chinese, and they were unwisely permitted to work them in large companies of several hundred, under their own overseers.  This gave them the advantages of a compact organization:  to a dangerous degree they became a state within the state.

When the war in China broke out, the Chinese residents at Sarawak, sympathizing with their countrymen, were naturally greatly excited; and when tidings came that the English fleet had been repulsed from before the Canton forts, they were emboldened to take the desperate step of attempting to put to death or to drive out of the country Rajah Brooke and the rest of the English people, that they themselves might take possession of it.  About dusk on a February night, six hundred of them gathered under their chiefs, armed themselves, went on board cargo-boats, and began to float down the river towards the capital.  At midnight they attacked the Rajah’s house.  Its inmates were forced to flee to the jungles.  The Rajah rose from a sick-bed, ran to the banks of the stream, dove under one of the Chinese boats, swam the river, and took refuge with the Malays.  Several of his countrymen were murdered.  His own house, filled with the priceless collections of a lifetime, together with a costly library, was burned.