The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-31
From the Pail Mall Gazette.

From the Pall Mall Gazette.
 INGAPORE is agitated just now @) by tale of piracy one of the S old sort, legendary now. Some few weeks ago a Chinese junk was boarded near Johore. that Is within sight of the island. if not of the city, and seven men were killed besides the captain, spared for torture until he surrendered his valuables. Police, blue Jackets and volunteers are searching for the miscreants.
 Perhaps there Is no case on record so outrageous within such a trifling distance from the men of war in Singa- pore roads, but elsewhere in those seas 1t would not have been remarkable less than 50 years ago. Malay pirates' are so closely identified with fiction of the boys adventure class that skeptics have doubted their existence in plain fact. But the widest romancer would not dare to describe them as they actually were in their great day.
 About 1850 Rajah Brooke put the number of those who swept the coasts of Borneo alone going and returning with the monsoons, at 5000. When consul at Bruni somewhat later, St. John estimated the population which lived, as one may say, by piracy at 60,000. And if "casuals" had been in cluded, with their women and children. it would have been vastly larger.
 The judicious reader instantly replies that trade must have come to an end promptly under this infliction. But the ruffians did not depend on plunder. It was welcome, but they sought slaves and blood, inexplicable as it seems to us, the parompaks, though mostly Mo- hammedans, regarded their employment as a calling or profession to which they were born. With no thought of wrong doing apparently, they murdered harm less fishermen, sailors or peasants dwelling on the shore if to oold or fee ble to be worth transport and tortured those whom they carried off. Among the most dreaded pirates also were the Seribas and Sakarran Dyaks. Rajah Brookes future subjects, who wanted heads and nothing more All plum der they surrendered to the Malay
  igated them. But these were a local scourge
 It is not very surprising to learn that the worst Malay pirates were not Ma lays at all; that unfortunate race bears a good many imputations which 1t does not deserve. The Lanuns, or lllanuns, dwelt originally in Mindanao great island of the Philippines, where Dampier found them peaceable enough, working gold They were not a seafarng peo- pie then, though their chiefs had their gorgeous barges. The Balinini came from Sulu; in fact that was piratical name for the islanders, otherwise called Sulus.
 Perhaps it was they who started the abominable practice, for the Spaniards were provoked into sending an expedi- ton against them as early as 1880. It failed, as did many another; and from that time," says the old historian Zuniga. '1t Is incredible what num- Der of Indians (Filipinos) have been made prisoners. what villages have been captured" But the Spaniards suc- ceeded at length in making Mindanao too hot to hold the Lanun freebooters. who dispersed, forming settlements up and down the China Sea, each of which became a center of piracy.
 One can understand that this way of life fosters courage and enterprise as we'll as seamanship. The daring of tn csc two peoples especially was su- perb. In their praus of 50 to 100 tons burden they started every year with the monsoon for cruise of six or IF or even IS months. Nothing daunted them until the treach herous European invented steam. Once the Lanuns sent e formal challenge to Batavia, inviting the Dutch fleet to a duel en regle; they did not turn up at the rendezvous, but experts believe that the cartel was de- 1 Iivered in good faith.
 The length of their cruise were scarcely credible. Wallace says the Sulus not infrequently reached Ceram and New Guiana They were brave ] to madness, full of life and energy