So the Malayan kingdoms arose and gained power; and strengthened by the spirit of cohesion which their religion gave them, they finally overthrew the Hindu-Javan empire of Majapahit.
In Borneo there were sultans at Bruni, Sambas, Banjermasin, Koti, Belungan, Pasir, Tanjong, Berau, and Pontianak, and other small states under pangirans and sherips.
Exaggerated accounts of the "sweet riches of Borneo" had led the early Portuguese, Dutch, and English voyagers to regard the island, the Insula Bonæ Fortunæ of Ptolemy, as the _El Dorado_ of the Eastern Archipelago; but these in turn found out their error, and, directing their attention to the more profitable islands in its neighbourhood, almost forsook Borneo until later years.
The Spaniards appear to have been the first Europeans to visit the island, as they were the first to make the voyage round the world, and to find the way to the Archipelago from the east, a feat which caused the Portuguese much uneasiness. They touched at Bruni in 1521, and Pigafetta says that there were then 25,000 families in the city, which on a low computation would give the population at 100,000; and he gives a glowing account of its prosperity. The Portuguese, under the infamous Jorge de Menezes, followed in 1526, and they were there again in 1530. They confirm Pigafetta as to the flourishing condition of the place. From 1530 the Portuguese kept up a regular intercourse with Bruni from Malacca, which the great Alfonso d'Albuquerque had conquered in 1511, until they were expelled from that place by the Dutch in 1641. Then they diverted the trade, which was chiefly in pepper, to their settlement at Macao, where they had placed a Factory in 1557, and from whence a Roman Catholic mission was established at Bruni by Fr. Antonio di Ventimiglia, who died there in 1691. It seems certain they had a Factory at Bruni, probably for a short time only, in the seventeenth century, though it is impossible now to do more than conjecture the date; but that they continued their trade with Bruni up to the close of the eighteenth century appears to be without doubt; and also that they had a Factory at Sambas out of which they were driven by the Dutch in 1609. On Mercator's map, alluded to in the first footnote of this chapter, are the words "Lave donde foÿ Don Manuel de Lima," or Lave where Don Manuel of Lima[52] resided. Lave is Mempawa, sometimes spelt Mempava in recent English maps, a place between Sambas and Pontianak—so the Portuguese were even farther south than Sambas in the sixteenth century.