convinced that Borneo and the Eastern Isles afforded an open field for enterprise and research.  To carry to the Malay races, so long the terror of the European merchant-vessel, the blessings of civilisation, to suppress piracy, and extirpate the slave-trade, became his humane and generous objects; and from that hour the energies of his powerful mind were devoted to this one pursuit.  Often foiled—­often disappointed, with a perseverance and enthusiasm which defied all obstacle, he was not until 1838 enabled to set sail from England on his darling project."’ Having procured and manned a yacht, he set out on his expedition to the Eastern seas, in spite of all sarcasms from croakers; and ’when the news came home that he had truly engaged in the suppression of the Malay sea-robbers, and had been rewarded by the cession to him, by a grateful native prince, of the territory and governorship of Sarawak—­a tract embracing about 3000 square miles of country, with a sea-board of about fifty miles—­said croakers began to think the adventurous undertaking not so wild after all.  The steps by which he became rajah of Sarawak may be here recounted.  When in his vessel, the Royalist, he reached the coast of that country, he found its ruler engaged in the suppression of one of the rebellions frequent in uncivilised regions.  His aid was solicited by the Rajah Muda Hassim, and that aid being given, secured the triumph of the authorities.  Muda being soon afterwards called by the sultan to the post of prime-minister, suggested the making the English captain his successor at Sarawak—­a step eventually taken.  The newly-acquired territory was swampy and ill cultivated by the native Dyaks, who varied their occupations, as tillers of the land, by excursions amongst neighbouring villages, in search of heads.  To rob the native of a neighbouring town of his cranium, was regarded in much the same light as the capture of a scalp would be amongst North American savages.  Brooke saw at once that no improvement could arise whilst murder was regarded not only as a pleasant amusement, but to some extent as a religious duty.  He declared head-hunting a crime punishable by death to the offender.  With some trouble and much risk he succeeded to a great extent in effecting a reform.  Attacking at the same time another custom of the country—­that of piracy—­he acted with such vigour, that a class of well-meaning people at home, stimulated to some extent by the private enemies of Brooke, accused him of wholesale butchery.  The fact that the destruction of pirates was rewarded by the English executive by the payment of what was called “head-money,” justly increased the outcry.  To kill one pirate entitled the crew of a ship-of-war to a certain prize in money—­to kill a thousand, entitled them to a thousand times the amount.  This premium on blood was wrong in principle, and the result of a wholesale slaughter of Eastern pirates by order of Brooke, led to the very proper abolition of the