Note 8 — Chapter XXIII
Reading edition
In the course of ten years, under the circumstances detailed—from enforced labor, from famine, from slavery, from sickness, from the sword—one half of the Dyak population8 disappeared; and the work of extirpation would have gone on at an accelerated pace, had the remnant been left to the tender mercies of the Pangerans; but chance (we may much more truly say Providence) led our countryman Mr. Brooke to this scene of misery, and enabled him, by circumstances far removed beyond the grounds of calculation, to put a stop to the sufferings of an amiable people.