In May 1523, Antonio de Britto, the Portuguese governor of the Molucca isles, sent Simon de Bru to discover the passage from thence by the island of Borneo to Malacca.

Men bowed to him with honest good-will, and boys, who had been flogged at school for confounding Congo and Coromandel, and putting Borneo in the Bight of Benin, made an awkward obeisance and stared wonderingly, as they met the man who had actually sailed round the world, and had, in his own person, illustrated the experiment of walking with his head downwards among the antipodes.

Their manners and customs are very similar, in many respects, to what they were on the arrival of the Spaniards; and sometimes they also remind one of those prevailing among the Dyaks of Borneo at the present day.

The island is situated between Visayas on the north and Borneo on the south; it is bounded on the east by the Pacific Ocean, and on the west by the island of Paragua, the Strait of Balabac, and Borneo.

To the north they are called Idaan or Tirun, and those so termed are best known to the Sulus, or the inhabitants of that part of the coast of Borneo over which the Sulus rule.