214 CO.\IPKNDIUM OF GEOGRAPHY AND TPtAVEL 



from the country now called British North Borneo, two 

 separate chains of islands run to form conipecting- links 

 with the main group of the Philippines, the most eastern 

 being known as the Sulu Archipelago. 



The coast of Borneo is very little indented with bays, 

 and nowhere by deep inlets. The few bays it possesses 

 are towards the north-eastern extremity, where the coast 

 is somewhat higher and more abrupt. As a rule the 

 island is liordered throughout by a consideraljle width of 

 swamp and lowland, except at a few points where there 

 are high promontories or a small extent of hilly country. 

 Various ranges of mountains, which may be roughly de- 

 scribed as radiating from a common centre, divide the 

 island into sections, the intervening land being low, flat, 

 and marshy, and it has been pointed out that a subsidence 

 of 500 feet would allow the sea to fill the great valleys 

 of the Kapuas, Barito, and Koti rivers almost to the 

 centre of the island, greatly reducing it in size, and causing 

 it to assume a star-shaped outline much resembling that 

 of the neighbourmg island of Celebes. 



Politically, Borneo is divided into four separate terri- 

 tories — British North Borneo or Saba occupying the 

 northern portion, and Sarawak the greater part of the 

 north-western. Between them lies the small independent 

 state of the Sultan of Brunei. The rest of the island be- 

 longs to the Dutch, and is considerably larger than the 

 aggregate of the other three territories. The island is, on 

 the whole, very sparsely inhabited. It is impossible to 

 obtain any exact data as to its population, but it is esti- 

 mated as under 2,000,000. 



2. History. 



So far as is known, the Italian traveller Varthema 



