The Sandakan Diary
Tom’s Note: The founder’s wife of Sandakan, located on Sabah’s east coast, wrote this small diary in 1894.
Bajau Legend
The Sultan of Johore had a beautiful daughter that was betrothed to the Sultan of Sulu. When the time came, a large fleet was assembled to escort her to Sulu. When passing up the coast of Brunei, the Sultan of Brunei attacked the fleet and, in the night, captured the princess and carried her off to Brunei.
The escort was greatly disturbed because they would be executed if they returned to Johore or continued to Sulu. They wandered the seas, and when their large boats became rotten, they went ashore and made smaller boats. They kidnapped wives from the women of the shores, and in this matter, they originated their roving habits, which they continue to this day. (1894)
Slavery
The Spanish constantly feared that Suloos might rush their town, taking the most extraordinary precautions. The children must be gathered carefully to their homes each evening, fearing they may be stolen as enslaved people. Thefts, from ponies to dollars and boxes of clothes, are rife. Every man walks around with his parang, which in the slightest provocation is drawn. The greatest lawlessness seems to prevail everywhere.
Sulu Described
Five years before, the chief town of Sulu had been a typical waterside village with huts on stilts built out over the water in a manner familiar with all of Southeast Asia. The city of Sooloo (sic) is built much in the same manners as Brunei, running out in three lines to the sea, the piles of outer houses being about four fathoms, and intervals between the lines could admit the ship.
Samarang.
By 1898 the city of Sulu had been occupied by the Spanish and transformed. In approaching it from the sea, it had a park-like appearance, with woods and clumps of trees alternating with stretches of brilliant green grass running up the hillside. We neared the town of Jolo, its white-washed houses peeping between the greenery.
What struck us most was the wall around the city with its turrets and lookout stations. The wall ran down and enclosed the beach. One had to pass through large iron gates painted black to enter the city. Inside the entrance is half continental and half oriental inside a large boulevard lined with trees with Chinese shops on either side.
Sulu is, in fact, a well-laid-out garden with broad streets lined with trees with homes underneath. Tiny public parks are everywhere with low white-washed parapets of ornamental stonework. The little place is kept extremely trim and neat by a large body of convicts for whom no other work can be found. The latticework of the windows is composed of mother of pearl. They have no verandas as the trees support sufficient shade.
The inhabitants, for the most part, are rather shabbily dressed and weedy-looking soldiers who have just awakened from a long sleep and are proposing to take another nap as soon as possible. The women we saw mostly wore the Filipino costume, a short bodice cut low at the neck and waist, in fact, little more than a broad band of cloth, with large white sleeves and a short overdress. In the case of the men, they have a habit of wearing their shirts loose instead of being tucked inside. The Spanish lady or two did not wear any head coverings, and the cut of her dress was more like a morning gown. Such condiments as English ladies wear, such as veils and gloves, are cast aside.
A point that struck us as odd was the wearing of the pigtail by the Chinese. It was unplaited and coiled around the head. The Spanish require this type of headwear, not understanding it is a type of disrespect if the Chinese speak to a European with his queue tied up. He will never address a mandarin unless his hair is down.
No Chinese are allowed into the Philippines but are only there because a hefty bribe is paid yearly to the higher authorities to wink at their presence. It is said the Captain General pocket $120,000 every Chinese New Year. So exclusive are the Spanish that even our Chinese servant had to get a pass from the Captain before he could go ashore.
From:
The Sandakan Diary of the 1890s in the Sarawak Museum Journal 1955
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