b DUTCH BORNEO-EXPEDITION. 



and flat is the country that the tide is recognizable as 

 far up the river as Sanggau, the residence of the Contro- 

 leur of the district of that name. 



The alluvial delta of the Kapoeas is almost entirely 

 covered with a dense jungle of Mangrove, Screw-pines 

 {Pandanus) and Nipa-palms , which latter almost exclusi- 

 vely border the different arms of the river-delta. Only 

 here and there is this wilderness interrupted by small 

 native rice-plantations or »ladangs", as they are generally 

 called, with a few very primitive huts, the temporary 

 abodes of the sparse scattered Malay population. 



The more elevated interior is almost uniformly covered 

 with high forest, interspersed with the settlements and plan- 

 tations of the Malay and Dyak population , and to a very 

 great extent with abandoned ladangs , which are again 

 taken possession of by a luxurious jungle- and forest- 

 vegetation. With the exception of the higher slopes and 

 summits of the mountains and the valleys along the un- 

 navigable parts of the rivers, it is far from easy, through- 

 out the whole Kapoeas-basin , to find a space covered 

 with really virgin forest. 



There is but very little agricultural enterprise on the part 

 of Europeans in the country, though the fertile soil , espe- 

 cially higher up , is adapted for tobacco- and coffee-farming. 

 The population is, as a rule, extremely spread over the 

 vast territory, and their settlements are restricted for the 

 most part to the banks of the rivers , which latter form 

 the only practicable highways of the country. 



The aborigines of the Kapoeas-basin are the Dyaks, 

 forming numerous tribes with but little , if any, political 

 organisation. This is the reason , why the Malay popula- 

 tion under their Sultans, Panembahans, Pangerans and 

 whatever else all the still inferior lilliput princes may be 

 called , have slowly succeeded in pushing the Dyaks back 

 to the remote parts of the country, and in getting com- 

 plete supremacy over those who did not mind keeping their 

 abodes amongst the Malays , or even became Mohammedans 



Notes from the Leyden. Museum, Vol. XIX. 



