he and I, and had thus been enabled to see, through
the eyes of many travellers, those almost unknown
lands of tropical splendour to which the pioneers have
gone. Since then a further collection of private
letters and explorers’ reports have been lent to me—
official documents, and letters of interesting experiences.
I t is believed by certain friends of mine that, with this
exceptional material at my disposal, I may compile and
write a book of practical value (a pioneer volume, let
me call it) upon the new colony and the newest British
charter. The Directors have given me access to their
correspondence upon the subject. In addition to this
epistolary history, I shall avail myself of the best-
written sources of information that bear upon the plan
and object of the work in hand, the intention of which
is to set forth the position and prospects of the new
colony, and to tell the story of the East India Company s
nineteenth-century successor.1
1 Until thirty years ago the story of Borneo was that of an uncivilized
country, the possession of which was a bone of contention
between the Dutch and the English. Oliver Van Noort visited the
island in 1598. A few years later his countrymen began to trade
with it. In 1609 they concluded a commercial treaty with the rulers
of the Sambas, and built a factory. After about twenty years of effort
-they abandoned the idea of establishing a settlement, n 1707 the
•F.nglish appeared on the Bornean coast. They built factories, but
.with no permanent success. In 1763 they take possession of Balan-
bangan, andin 1774 the garrison is successfully assaulted by pirates.
A year later the Dutch establish a factory at Pontianak, and in 1780
the reigning powers cede part of the west coast to the Dutch. In
alliance with the Sultan of Pontianak, they destroy Succadana, and
in 1787 are granted portions of the south coast. In 1812 an English,
expedition goes out against Sambar and fails ; to succeed, however, in
1813. In 1818 the Dutch, who during this war had been expelled, by
the English, return, and their Bornean colonies are now formed into
a special government. J Sir James Brooke visited Borneo in 1839, to
“ While I sit before that pile of books and papers,
from which the romantic story of the tropical island
and its northern colony is to be extracted, the
Continental express has transferred its travellers to
foreign boat and train. Before I have analyzed half
of my collection of letterpress and manuscript, the
former occupant of the empty room will have stood
face to face with Nature in her most lovely and yet
most strange and startling forms. Sabah has been
described as ‘ an earthly paradise.’ The simile may
hold good, from a British point of view, when the
owners have built piers and roads and villages there
on approved models; when the planter is on the spot
and the new colonist is sowing his rice; when the
cooling breezes of Kina Balu waft the punkahs of hill
residences, and the wild ‘ gardens of the sun ’ are
cultivated tracts of fruits and flowers.2 This time may
succeed in carrying out, by his own personal energy, what the great
East India Company had failed to accomplish. He founded Sarawak.
With the aid of Admiral Keppell he annihilated the dangerous hordes
of pirates that infested the western coasts. He successfully stamped
out a rising of Chinese, in which operation the native tribes loyally
came to his assistance; and he has demonstrated, financially and
politically, the wisdom of those early Dutch and British adventurers
who saw a splendid property in the island of Borneo. In 1848 the
English Government, seeing the importance of a station in this latitude,
purchased Labuan, an island off the coast of Borneo, and made
it an English colony, with a governor and all the necessary officers
and appliances of an efficient administration. Such is the brief history
of Borneo, possession of which is now divided between the Dutch
Government, the Sultan of Brunei, Rajah Brooke, and the British
North Borneo Company, the latter endorsed in its undertaking by
royal charter.
This is only the suggestion of a possibility. The idea is conceived
m a more rosy vein of imagination than the reality may have warranted.
There are spots in North Borneo that might be described as
earthly paradises,” rich in natural beauties, blessed with pure water,