calm shallows, bounded by rock walls and great beds of waterworn stones, which during the frequent freshets are submerged by a boiling flood. The whole river in these upper reaches is for the most part roofed in by the overarching forest.

Practically the whole of Borneo, from the seacoast to the summits of the highest mountains, is covered with a dense forest. On the summits this consists of comparatively stunted trees, of which every part is thickly coated with moss. In all other parts the forest consists of great trees rising to a height of 150 feet, and even 200 feet, and of a dense undergrowth of younger and smaller trees, and of a great variety of creepers, palms, and ferns. Trees of many species (nearly 500) yield excellent timber, ranging from the hardest ironwood or BILIAN, and other hard woods (many of them so close-grained that they will not float in water), to soft, easily worked kinds. A considerable number bear edible fruits, notably the mango (from which the island derives its Malay name, PULU KLEMANTAN), the durian, mangosteen, rambutan, jack fruit, trap, lansat, banana of many varieties, both wild and cultivated, and numerous sour less nutritious kinds. Wild sago is abundant in some localities. Various palms supply in their unfolding leaves a cabbage-like edible. Among edible roots the caladium is the chief. Rubber is obtained as the sap of a wild creeper; gutta-percha from trees of several varieties; camphor from pockets in the stem of the camphor tree (DRYOBALANOPS AROMATICA). But of all the jungle plants those which play the most important parts in the life of the people are the many species of the rattan and the bamboo; without them more than half the crafts and most of the more important material possessions of the natives would be impossible, and their lives would perhaps nearly conform to the conventional notion of savage existence as something 'nasty, dull, and brutish.' The jungle of Borneo is, of course, famous for its wealth of orchids, and can claim the distinction of producing the largest flower of the world (RAFFLESIA), and many beautiful varieties of the pitcher plant.

The forests of Borneo harbour more than 450 species of birds, many of them being of gorgeous colouring or strange and beautiful forms; especially noteworthy are many hawks, owls, and eagles, fly-catchers, spider-hunters, sun-birds, broad-bills, nightjars, orioles, miners, pigeons, kingfishers, hornbills, trojans, magpies, jays, crows, partridges, pheasants, herons, bitterns, snipes, plovers, Curlews, and sandpipers. Amongst these are many species peculiar to Borneo; while on the mountains above the 4000-feet level are found several species which outside Borneo are known only in the Himalayas.

Besides the mammals mentioned above, Borneo claims several species of mammal peculiar to itself, notably the long-nosed monkey (NASALIS LARVATUS); two species of ape (SEMNOPITHECUS HOSEI and S. CRUCIGER); many shrews and squirrels, including several flying species; a civet-cat (HEMIGALE HOSEI); a deer (CERVUS BROOKII); the bearded pig (SUS HARBATUS); the curious feather-tailed shrew (PTYLOCERCUS LOWII).

Reptiles are well represented by the crocodile, which abounds in all the rivers, a long-snouted gavial, numerous tortoises and lizards with several flying species, and more than seventy species of snakes, of which some are poisonous, while the biggest, the python, attains a length of thirty feet. The rivers abound in edible fish of many species; insects are of course numerous and varied, and, aided by the multitude of frogs, they fill the island each evening at sunset with one vast chorus of sound.

CHAPTER 2

History of Borneo

The Pagan tribes of Borneo have no written records of their history and only very vague traditions concerning events in the lives of their ancestors of more than five or six generations ago. But the written records of more cultured peoples of the Far East contain references to Borneo which throw some small rays of light upon the past history and present condition of its population. It has seemed to us worth while to bring together in these pages these few historical notes. The later history of Borneo, which is in the main the story of its occupation by and division between the Dutch and English, and especially the romantic history of the acquisition of the raj of Sarawak by its first English rajah, Sir James Brooke, has often been told,[3] and for this reason may be dismissed by us in a very few words.

The coasts of Borneo have long been occupied by a Mohammedan population of Malay culture; this population is partly descended from Malay and Arab immigrants, and partly from indigenous individuals and communities that have adopted the Malay faith and culture in recent centuries. When Europeans first visited the island, this population, dwelling for the most part, as it still does, in villages and small towns upon the coast and in or near the mouths of the rivers, owed allegiance to several Malay sultans and a number of subordinate rulers, the local rajahs and pangirans. The principal sultans had as their capitals, from which they took their titles, Bruni on the north-west, Sambas in the west, Pontianak at the mouth of the Kapuas river, Banjermasin in the south at the mouth of the river of the same name, Pasir at the south-east corner, Kotei and Balungan on the east at the mouths of the rivers of those names; while the Sultan of Jolo, the capital of the Sulu islands, which lie off the north coast, claimed sovereignty over the northern end of Borneo. But these Malay sultans were not the first representatives in the island of culture and of civilised or semi-civilised rule; for history preserves some faint records of still earlier times, of which some slight confirmation is afforded by surviving traces of the culture then introduced.

In spite of all the work done on the history of the East Indies, most of what occurred before and much that followed the arrival of Europeans remains obscure. There are several Asiatic nations whose records might be expected to contain valuable information, but all are disappointing. The Klings, still the principal Hindu traders in the Far East, visited the Malay Archipelago in the first or at any rate the second century after Christ,[4] and introduced their writing[5] and chronology. But their early histories are meagre and unsatisfactory in the extreme. The Arab culture of the Malays, which took root in Sumatra in the twelfth century, is of course of no assistance in regard to events of earlier date, and does not give trustworthy and detailed accounts until the fifteenth century. The Chinese, on the other hand, always a literary people, carefully preserved in their archives all that could be gathered with regard to the "southern seas." But China was far away, and many local events would possess no interest for her subjects. Under the circumstances, the official historians deserve our gratitude for their geographical descriptions and for the particulars of tribute-bearing missions to the Son of Heaven, though they have little else to tell.

The first account we have been able to find referring to Borneo is a description of the kingdom of Poli from the Chinese annals of the sixth century. Poli was said to be on an island in the sea south-east of Camboja, and two months south-east of Canton. The journey thither was made by way of the Malay Peninsula, a devious route still followed by Chinese junks. Envoys were sent to the Imperial court in A.D. 518, 523, and 616. "The people of this country," our authority says, "are skilled in throwing a discus-knife, and the edge is like a saw; when they throw it at a man, they never fail to hit him. Their other arms are about the same as in China. Their customs resemble those of Camboja, and the productions of the country are the same as of Siam. When one commits a murder or theft they cut off his hands,[6] and when adultery has been