Master Mariner

THE LIFE AND VOYAGES OF

AMASA DELANO

Captain Amasa Delano, 1763-1823



BY
JAMES B. CONNOLLY

1943

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CHAPTER VIII

The Sultan of Sooloo

THE SOOLOOS lay beyond Borneo. Amasa had heard interesting stories of Borneo: the biggest island in the world, unless New Guinea would be bigger, and of course the continent of New Holland (Australia). He had a hope the commodore would put in somewhere in Borneo, this that he might verify some of the stories he had heard of the natives, who, unless gossip lied, were more barbarous than even the New Guineans.

The commodore did not put in to Borneo. He was for getting on to the Sooloos and completing his round of the islands. And so Amasa saw no more of Borneo than its high north coast as they sailed past it on their northerly course to the Sooloos. There was the mountain called Kinni Balla (Kinibalu now), or Mount St. Peter. If the position given on his chart were correct then Amasa was seeing that mountain from seventy leagues away, which of course could not be. Neither his spyglass nor the commodore's or any other spyglass was that powerful. It was the inaccuracy of the chart. Some charts were that way.

After leaving the north headland of Borneo astern, it was a clear road to the Sooloo Sea.

"The Sooloo Sea lies between 5 and 11 north latitude and 117 and 125 east longitude. The Sea is enclosed by Mindanao (Philippines island) to the north, by the Sooloo Islands east and south, Borneo south and west; and Banguey and Palawan on the west. In the northern part of the sea, the winds are fresher and more constant; in the southern part, the winds are more variable, and the calms more frequent. The Sooloo archipelago includes hundreds of islands, mostly small; but Sooloo Island (the Commodore's objective) is of fair size, being miles long east and west and 25 miles north and south. Two points of land lead from the south side of the harbor in Sooloo Island. Sailing, into these roads, the island must be kept close on board.

Commodore McCluer wasn't too easy in his mind on coming to anchor in Sooloo Harbor. The island had been out of bounds for English ships since the tragedy of Balambangan twenty-five years before this. The Sultan of Sooloo had turned the island of Balambangan over to the English; and the English began to move in and settle there. The Sooloo Islands were inhabited almost solidly by Malays, and they gave much first aid to the English settlers in the building of their dwellings and the setting up of a fort. (In those days white settlers in those eastern isles wasted no time in building a fort.)

After thus aiding the English the Malays returned to their own island of Sooloo. And then? The English were getting along with their fort when a fleet of proas, with armed Malays jamming them from bow to stern, landed at Balambangan in the night, rushed the fort, and turned the guns of the fort--what guns were mounted--upon the settlement.

From a historian in the ship's library Amasa got:

"They made the English fly in utter consternation to the boats and the vessels in the harbour for safety. Many were killed, others taken prisoners, and the whole settlement destroyed. A gentleman, who was sitting in the house of the governor that morning, told me of a cannon ball from the fort entering the walls of the room where his family were. It struck a chest of dollars; and made them rattle round the apartment like a storm of hail."

Even up to the visit of the McCluer expedition the English claimed not to know the influence behind the attack on Balambangan. At times they would say the attack was inspired by the Dutch, because of their Molucca trade being threatened. Again they laid it on the Spaniards, who feared the settlement threatened their possession of the Philippine Islands so close by. Yet again the blame was charged to the pure savagery of the barbarians of the Sooloo Archipelago at large, they fearing domination by these new white peoples.

Commodore McCluer's hope for the Sooloos was to build up a better feeling toward the English. The matter of trade would be looked into of course; but trade would follow the good feeling. The Sooloos offered many useful items for trading purposes--sago, pearls, bêche-de-mer, gold dust, turtle shells, ivory, camphor, birds'-nests, and so on.

The birds'-nests held a special interest for Amasa. While in Canton he had seen mandarins and Hong merchants paying fabulous prices for birds'-nests. They made soup of the nests. In Timor Amasa learned that a tiny bird, small as a small swallow, collected a white, glutinous substance from the foam of the sea as it rolled up on the beach and made nests of it in the caverns and crevices of cliffs beside the sea.

Malays in Timor would dive into the sea to enter the mouths of the caverns where the tiny birds were and collect their nests.

Their example so stirred Amasa that he had himself "lowered fifty feet by a rope into a chasm between the cliffs, and there caught the swallows upon the nests, and plucked their nests. The nests were of the size of a quarter of a large orange peel, they were white like isinglass, and a single nest weighed about an ounce."

Amasa's craving for first-hand knowledge of strange customs led him to try out a bird's-nest soup. He found it "possessing an agreeable aromatic flavour."

The need of fresh provisions had to be met while at Sooloo. It was known that fat cattle were to be had there for little money--two or three Spanish dollars for a bullock, and take it out in trade. Goats were plentiful. Amasa swapped a knife or a goat. Hogs, sheep, and fowls of every sort abounded. Vegetables and fruits of many kinds and in quantities and fish of excellent quality and in great numbers were to be had for trifles and toys. Green turtles, big ones-- five-hundred-pound fellows--could be had for what the buyer felt like paying. And as for rice, a shipload of rice was cheaper than a kettle of salt cod back in Boston.

For trading purposes the Panther carried plenty of "cheap cotton goods, white and colored calicoes, also opium, knives, scissors, razors, small looking-glasses, spy-glasses, perfumes, bergamot, essence of lavender and lemon, curious toys, and a few fine goods."

The gossip of the East had it that European captains should be always on guard at Sooloo, never give the Malays a chance to cut off their ships--this even before Balambangan. As Amasa got it:

"Fourteen guns, and musketry in proportion, was the least force a vessel should carry that would do business with Sooloo. Let her ride at anchor in the harbor in ten, eleven, and twelve fathoms water at half a mile from the shore. There were guns ashore that could do serious damage to a vessel at close range."

McCluer had these warnings in mind when he arrived in Sooloo Harbor. He anchored the Panther and the Endeavour beyond the range of the guns of a fort ashore. He also held his carriage guns at a ready and released the muskets and pistols from his cabin racks for the arming of his men.

The two vessels arrived in Sooloo short of wood and water. The wood would have to be hauled from the hills outside the town and then carried in canoes to the vessels. Water was to be had in the town, or more conveniently at a watering place under a large tree near a point of rocks that could be seen from the vessels. Water was an immediate necessity. A water party put off from each vessel, and there they were, at the point of rocks near the big tree, a mile to the eastward of the town, while the commodore looked through his long glass to see how they were getting on.

That was on their second day in Sooloo, and McCluer risked the water-party landing because of the natives who--

"Came on board in great numbers and without the least sign of fear. Some of their most respectable persons, and females of the first rank, were among them. The daughters of the sultan came, and were much gratified with the attention, which we paid them, and with the indulgence of their curiosity in every part of our vessels. They conducted themselves with great dignity and propriety, and seemed to have an habitual sense of the value of modesty."

Walking the deck of a vessel had once more become tedious exercise to Amasa. He was itching to stretch his legs ashore and see what was doing there. He put in for shore leave. The commodore refused, saying it was too dangerous for a white man alone. Amasa bided his time. Among the ship's visitors was an old Moor who had been a captain in the English service from the taking of Manila to the time when it was given back to the Spaniards. He had come to Sooloo, had married there, secured the sultan's favor, and was at this time an officer--a subahdar--in the palace guards.

Amasa had been studying the Moorish language in his spare time on shipboard, and between what Moorish he knew and what English the old fellow hadn't forgotten the pair managed to hold almost fluent conversations. He asked the Moor if he could arrange for him to make a visit ashore and there show him what might be interesting or instructive to a man who'd been weeks to sea and was also a visitor from a far country. The old lad thought he could arrange it, provided Amasa would follow instructions.

Amasa knew that the commodore would like very well to get first-hand information--military, political, and trading information--of what was doing ashore; so now he again put in for leave to go ashore, telling the commodore what the old Moor had promised him.

The commodore tried to scare, or pretended to scare, Amasa out of his plan, pointing out that the project was extremely dangerous, that Amasa might be taken and considered as a spy, that he might be murdered through jealousy, that the general enmity which the Malays of Sooloo long bore to the Europeans might induce some wild one of them to stick a knife between his ribs. There was no guessing what those Malays running amok with their long wave-shaped knives would try to do; and so on and so on.

Amasa argued, and eventually the commodore capitulated, saying, as Amasa blushingly records, that he had a name for working his way well through difficulties, that some good might grow out of the enterprise, even to a friendly intercourse being set up with the people. "But," added the commodore, "let it be understood, that if you are detected and held as a spy, which is likely to happen, you must say you are ashore on business of which I know nothing, or--or--you might say you are ashore on an affair of gallantry, which is the sort of thing these Malays will more easily believe."

Amasa agreed to the conditions and bound the old Moor to the same agreement without letting him know of the understanding between the commodore and himself. After dark that night a son-in-law of the Moor paddled under a gun port in the bow of the Panther and handed Amasa a long robe. Amasa put it on over his uniform and dropped through the gun port into the canoe. He then sat perfectly still, the hood of the robe over his head, while his guide paddled in and out among hundreds of canoes in the harbor to the mouth of a small river.

The guide paddled up the river for a quarter-mile or so, to where there was a row of bamboo houses on piles on the riverbank. He made the canoe fast to a pile under a bamboo house, stepped ashore, and led Amasa past throngs of people to the home of the old Moor. They were about to enter the house when something--Amasa's manner of walking or some careless gesture, whatever it was--hinted to the people near the house that here was a foreigner. Several of them raced after him, but the smart old subahdar was already holding his door open and greeting Amasa in Malay as an old friend. The pursuing mob thereupon pulled up, and the Moor closed the door behind Amasa.

Amasa was introduced to the Moor's wife, and to his daughter, the wife of his guide. The two women greeted him cordially and hurried to offer him refreshments. Presently Amasa heard sounds of a hubbub from the street outside. The Moor listened and reported that the shouting ones were demanding to know what a foreigner was doing among them. The subahdar went to the door and told them that his visitor was a friend of many years, and they must not disturb him. If they persisted in disturbing his old friend he would report them to the sultan. They went silent for a time, then they asked to be admitted to see for themselves what the friend was like.

The subahdar admitted two women of the outside group to his house; and the four women and the three men passed the time in pleasant chatter, with the old Moor and the son-in-law acting as interpreters. Being a subahdar meant that the Moor had to stand a midnight watch at the palace, and so when the hour drew near he left to attend to his guard duty. The son-in-law went with him. That left Amasa the only man in the house. Half an hour later fifteen Malays entered the house, and each Malay had a long, curved knife in his waist sash. They formed a circle of 180 degrees around Amasa and gave him a great looking over. Amasa did not know enough Malay to carry on a lively talk with them; so he stayed silent, and the fifteen Malays stayed silent. Half an hour or so of the silent treatment had Amasa guessing at what would be the manner of his execution when those fifteen Malays decided he had been allowed to live long enough.

The subahdar returned while Amasa's imagination was still working double tides. Before he was fairly through the door Amasa asked him what the fifteen Malays meant to do to him. The subahdar answered that they meant no harm, and for him to make himself agreeable to them, and they would soon go. Amasa mustered a series of smiles, informing the Moor in English as he smiled that he wasn't at all enjoying the company of the fifteen Malays, not with creeses showing so openly in their waist sashes.

The subahdar then spoke to the fifteen and they stood up, salaamed to Amasa, and filed out. The subahdar then informed Amasa that the men were members of the sultan's guards; and, having heard that he had a foreign friend in from the English vessel in the harbor, they had asked for the privilege of seeing the foreigner at close quarters.

"It was a natural curiosity," explained the subahdar. "If I were in your country, at your home and among your friends, would not your friends wish to come in and gaze upon me?"

Amasa could only say why yes, of course, to that; but he still had his doubts of the pacific intentions of men who came visiting with long knives showing so plainly in their belts. He warned the subahdar that it would be bad business if he allowed him to be killed. Hadn't the subahdar himself seen aboard the ship in what high regard he was held by the commodore? Indeed, as chief navigator to the expedition he was indispensable to the commodore, who would surely avenge his death.

That hurt the subahdar's feelings, and Amasa felt that perhaps he had been too harsh. They had a heart-to-heart talk then, and wound up by smoking a friendly hubblebubble of tobacco and opium, Amasa choosing the tobacco and the subahdar the opium. The subahdar then departed for another tour of the guards, this time locking the door as he went out and taking the key with him.

He was hardly gone when a fresh mob were making loud outcries and pounding the walls of the house. The subahdar's wife went downstairs and talked to them through a barred window on the street floor. She returned upstairs and made Amasa understand--she knew little Moorish and no English--that the people outside would pull down the house if one of the two women inside the house was not immediately delivered up to them. The friends of this woman had come after her. Amasa gestured that she must deliver the woman. She pantomimed that her husband had locked the street door and carried away the key. What a situation for me! Thought Amasa. Here I am, a foreigner in a strange land, locked in a strange house, surrounded by a howling mob of Malays, who at last reports were killing English people wholesale, and they probably all have long knives in theft belts. By this time he was sweating peppermints, and as best he could--by signs and his small stock of Malay--he asked the subahdar's wife what she was going to do about it. She pantomimed that she did not know what to do. The woman who was the storm center of it all then signed that she had a plan.

The upstairs windows were not barred. Would the large foreigner--she marked Amasa's height and breadth in the air--would he lower her through a window to the street in his strong arms? The lady was of considerable tonnage, but Amasa of the strong arms made a small matter of the job. He gathered her in, handed her through the window, and lowered her to the full length of his arms and into the up reaching arms of her waiting friends below deck. The friends, being thus appeased, tendered Amasa a series of handsome salaams and marched off in good order with the lady.

Amasa by then was promising himself that when and if he ever got safe back to his ship he would stay aboard her; and he so said to the subahdar when he returned to the house. No, no, said the subahdar, and went on to explain that as a result of Amasa's adventure the sultan now knew that an officer from the English ships was on shore, and he was not displeased with that officer, because he saw in him an agent for the resumption of friendly intercourse with the English. He wished the English to cease holding harsh feelings against his people for that unfortunate Balambangan episode. And so through the subahdar to his friend Lieutenant Delano the sultan was extending an invitation to Commodore McCluer and his staff to visit him at the palace.

After that glad word the subahdar refilled the two pipes, and he and Amasa had another hubble-bubble together; and the subahdar pointed through the window to where a group were still waiting to get a glimpse of his foreign friend. "Most of them," explained the subahdar, "have never even seen a white man! No!"

The prospect of serving as an ambassador of good will to a sultan and the leader of an important British expedition pleased Amasa. He had the subahdar call in the waiting ones outside and there was hubble-bubbling all around while they looked him over; and Amasa drew from under his robe a stock of scissors, penknives, combs, beads, and other staple articles of sea island commerce, and made gifts of them to the women. The commodore had provided Amasa with the articles and instructed him to be generous in their distribution--this after informing him that he was entirely on his own in case he was arrested as a spy.

Amasa left the subahdar's house in broad daylight and with the women shouting loud words of appreciation after him. Aboardship, the commodore and his officers had been wondering--and some were worrying--at his overnight absence. Now that he was safe back they were all extremely curious to know what he had seen and heard. Amasa's first word was that he could do with some breakfast. He then outlined his adventure in the house of the subahdar and passed the word that the subahdar would come on board that same morning with the invitation to the commodore and his officers to visit the sultan in his palace.

The subahdar arrived, and, after informing the commodore of the happy results of Lieutenant Delano's visit to his own home, he assured the commodore that if he and his officers would pay 'the sultan the honor of calling on him at his palace they would be extended every civility in the sultan's power. The commodore replied that he would be guided by Lieutenant Delano's advice. The question being put to Amasa, he answered that he would have no more concern for his safety in the port of Sooloo than in the city of London.

Next day the commodore and six of his officers, Amasa of course being one, got their full-dress uniforms out of their camphor chests and went ashore. Two Malay linguists were included in the party.

A guard of honor received them at the landing pier and conducted them to the palace. The sultan was standing by to receive them, and he right away started in to impress them with his riches. He brought forth a collection of precious stones. One pearl was the size of a pigeon's egg. Other pearls he had that he valued at thirty thousand dollars each, which meant twice that in Europe. He rolled a handful of oversized uncut diamonds onto the table. He showed enough weight of gold ornaments to sink a ship's quarter boat, or so it looked to Amasa.

The sultan's palace was a disappointment. It was a handsome house for Sooloo, but a meager-looking edifice beside the palaces of the mandarins and Hong merchants of Canton, or the residential houses of the high-placed Dutch officials in Timor or Java, or--as McCluer's officers informed Amasa--the English big houses in India. It was a two-story bamboo house with a tile roof and a wide veranda. The pale bamboo and the red tiles were a pretty contrast, and the gardens surrounding the palace made a handsome setting; but as a palace for a sultan! No.

The sultan, who wasn't at all stupid, noted the curious looks the officers were heaving at that quarter of the palace where they guessed the ladies of the harem were confined. He smiled and told them that he would admit them into his seraglio. He sent word ahead that the women should be dressed as usual for one of his visits of state. He gave them time to dress ship, and then he led the party through a heavily bolted gate to a court that was enclosed by a high wall of large sun-baked bricks. The bricks interested Amasa, they being three feet long, the biggest in the world, surely. The sultan led the way along a thirty-foot-wide shaded walk three hundred feet in length. Streets led off this walk, and on those streets were the dwellings of the sultan's wives and concubines.

Amasa also took note of the women of the harem:

"They came out of their houses when they saw us, and were dressed very richly in the Malay style, long and loose robes of various colours, and the finest cotton of India. They wore smiles upon their faces, and were disposed to as much intercourse with us as the sultan would permit. They were evidently gratified with the attentions which we paid to them, and perfectly understood the language of the eyes. We were informed that the sultan's women numbered almost three hundred. They were not all young, nor were many handsome. Youth and beauty however shone in perfection in the countenances and forms of a few.

The sultan's being all of sixty years of age and probably not so particular in his choice of a woman as when he was younger accounted (Amasa's judgment) for the unprepossessing members of his harem. Having uttered that judgment, Amasa followed with a scolding of the sultans, in general, who kept large harems:

"What a sacrifice of the rights and interests of one sex to the caprice and tyranny of the other when one man was allowed to have so many women for himself. How fatal an enemy to the character, improvement and happiness of woman is this system of polygamy! And how grateful ought we to be to a code of ethics, laws, and religion, by which it is forbidden and prevented!"

Amasa noted a delightful stream of water in the seraglio. And the trees were various and arranged in a pleasing order. The officers had brought along presents for the women, "which they accepted with graceful motions and grateful looks. At our return to the palace, we were treated with all the delicacies of the tables which the island afforded."

The sultan detailed officers to show the visitors the town. The town was small, three miles around, and thirty thousand people were living in ft. The houses were generally two stories high, with walls of split bamboo and roofs thatched with long grass, or the leaves of the plantain, cabbage, or coconut. There was a fort on high ground and with a ditch around it; but the walls were of weak construction and had caved in here and there. Mounted on the walls were thirty cannon, some of the largest size, being not less than forty-two-pounders. The guns taken at Balambangan were in the fort, and, as the English officers noted with a grimace, the mark of the English East India Company was still on them. In Amasa's judgment a single sloop of war could soon reduce the fort to ruins.

Good feeling toward the English was restored in Sooloo. The two ships took advantage of it to fill up on fresh meat, vegetables, and fruits. They also took aboard as much livestock as their decks would hold. So much livestock taken aboard had the officers asking questions. The commodore answered that the livestock was for the Pelews. He was counting heavily on the value of the Pelews to the English plans for the eastern islands. He was heading for the Pelews from Sooloo.