CHAPTER XII SANDAKAN - HELL'S OWN TOWN Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest - Drink and the devil had done for the rest We wrapped 'em all in a mains'l tight, And a fare-you-well, And a sullen plunge In the sullen swell, Ten fathoms deep on the road to Hell - YOUNG EWING ALLISON SANDAKAN is one of the few places on the face of the earth that should be razed to the ground — and, I almost said, including its population. It's a disgrace to the British nation under whose flag it carries on the vilest traffic known to man: the deliberate debauching of human beings as a factor in the opium traffic. In exact terminology, Sandakan is not a British colony. It is a British protectorate, however, being owned and governed by a private corporation - the British North Borneo Company — operating under a royal charter, with the power of life and death over thousands of defenseless natives and imported Chinese coolies whom it exploits with an abhorrent callousness and cruelty that is a blot on our civilization. And all in the name of creating dividends for stockholders in the British Isles. Why Great Britain does not rise in sheer loathing and wipe out this foul spot by revoking the charter which permits it to carry on, is a mystery to a white man. Here is a town of approximately fifteen thousand population with barely one hundred Europeans, among whom there may be a dozen women. With its picturesque and tropical setting so attractive to the eye as the steamer approaches its anchorage in the bay, it suggests a beautiful home with every creature comfort and luxury, situated over the vent of a foul latrine - with a distracted mother wondering why the children are continually down with malarial fever. Try and imagine a perfectly beautiful flower filling the whole house with its exquisite perfume only to discover that it has taken root in a putrid mass of unspeakable impurities beneath the foundation, the existence of which no one suspected. The difference between the simile and the actuality is that the Anglo-Saxon residents of this accursed town are only too well aware of the reeking conditions by which they are surrounded, morally and physically, and are become either wholly indifferent to them or appreciate the utter futility of applying a remedy. Sandakan struck me as a town trying to escape from itself. It is founded in a series of open sewers in the native and Chinese section down near the water-front, accompanied by a string of ramshackle wooden platforms, which serve for homes, stretching along the water's edge for a half to three quarters of a mile section simply shot through and through with the foulest of opium dens, gambling-hells, and unspeakable native houses of prostitution — all run under the eyes and with the permission (if not coöperation) of the resident management of the British North Borneo Company. The place suggests a horror-stricken criminal with a ball and chain to his leg, doing his best to climb out and away from the terrible mess into which his own viciousness has buried him. As a matter of fact the frightful conditions would not indicate the presence of an Anglo-Saxon within a million of miles and the visitor is overcome with wonder to think that a there are not only white men in the neighborhood who speak his language, but decent, respectable women as well. Turning our backs on these sinks of iniquity, we climb the hill to a small but scrupulously neat plaza or parade ground on which the British North Borneo Company's offices face, as well as the Planters' Club, both set off by deep, comfortable verandas. Within a stone's throw are the Protestant and Roman Catholic Missions and a Chinese joss-house. Just what particular use the Chinese of that crime-ridden town have for worship of any kind whatsoever, even of an otherwise respectable joss, is not apparent. And even if it were why the honorable British North Borneo Company should allow a heathenish outfit like that to locate itself cheek-by-jowl with two Christian missions is a puzzle. It would almost seem that they had done it with the idea of impressing upon those sodden wretches, at whose physical and spiritual ruin they seem to be conniving, that their joss was on a par with any Christian mission that might have the hardihood to attempt anything in the way of regeneration in that noisome hole. Certainly the Sandakan joss is the only deity (?) on the plaza that could have any possible interest in the charnel-house down by the waterside. It simply goes to show the depths to which that unclean municipality has sunk. Following a steep, winding road above the plaza we come upon the picturesque bungalows of the resident Europeans, surrounded by tropical vegetation: palms, flaming bougainvillea, blazing fire-trees, everything, in fact, that makes life livable. True one cannot wax enthusiastic over municipal problems with the thermometer at 110 and a fiendish humidity that will separate the glued joints of a picture frame and grow mould on one's shoes overnight. I can imagine the average resident and his wife consigning the native quarter to the nether regions, and can sympathize with their frame of mind. There is a tremendous amount to be said for the patient Britisher who accepts a job of that character and whose equally patient wife goes along with him into a climate that is going to make an old woman of her before her time. Such people are a credit to any country. And to see these folk put on their dinner clothes every night, despite the fact that ten minutes later they will be hopelessly wilted in a profuse perspiration is an inspiration. It's a part of the 'White Man's Burden' which they accept with a philosophy that would feaze the average American. Native labor being comparatively worthless in British North Borneo, the Company is obliged to depend upon Chinese coolies which it imports in large numbers, under promises of high wages, plenty of opium, and a fine healthy climate. These poor wretches are employed under the indenture system and their stay is limited to three hundred days, at the end of which they can go back home if they have money enough to pay their fare, or they can renew their indenture for another three hundred days which they generally do. The coolie, on arrival, receives an advance payment of twenty-five or thirty Singapore dollars which he is encouraged to spend in the native gambling-houses, dens of prostitution, and opium joints. A second advance is soon called for which is willingly made - and sometimes a third. And what the above-mentioned pest-holes do not get, the Company stores do, for supplies of all kinds, including medical attendance. In the end the poor coolie is compelled to resort to the pawnshop which is also controlled by the Company and you can picture the rest. In short, no matter how his money goes for food, clothes, medicine, gambling, prostitution, opium—it eventually finds its way into the pockets of the Company to which the poor wretch never is allowed to get out of debt. It is peonage in its worst form. It traffics in the weakness of the indentured man who comes there in health and is sent home, at the end of two or three years, a physical wreck, riddled with disease and a confirmed drug fiend. And now let's see just how the British Government fits into this little scheme: The British North Borneo Company buys its opium from the British Colonial Government of the Straits Settlements. It pays for the drug at the rate of $1.20 per tael, or one and one fifth ounces. After all kinds of alleged adulterations, the Chartered Company sells the product to the Chinese opium farmers at the modest figure of $8.50 per tael. Take your pencil and figure the profit. And the coolie pays a handsome profit on that figure to the tenant of the Chartered Company who runs the 'hop joint.' It surely is a fine business for the British Government to be in and takes us back to the situation in Hongkong and Canton. The Sandakan traffic in opium alone, I was informed, nets the British Government over $500,000 annually. One afternoon was quite long enough to spend in the town. After having walked the length of Jalan Tiga, the main street in the native section, about a quarter of a mile, lined on both sides by gambling dens, my attention was called to the streets running at right angles to it. These were openly set apart for the opium and prostitution traffic each resort having its sign boldly hung out with a view to attracting trade. A short walk therein was sufficient. And when I was told that the Sultan of Sulu received a subsidy of two hundred and fifty dollars per month from the Chartered Company for certain territorial concessions in North Borneo which had rested with the Sulu Government for hundreds of years, I understood the presence of his boat which we passed coming into the harbor. Incidentally, I was informed that he always came in person to col |