CLIMATE AND BIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS 17 



000. As regards the South and Eastern Division of 

 Dutch Borneo — roughly half of the island — to which my 

 travels were confined, the census returns of 1914 give in 

 round figures a total of 906,000 people, of whom 800 are 

 Europeans (470 men and 330 women), 86,000 Chinese, 

 817,000 Dayaks and Malays, and 2,650 Arabs and other 

 aliens. Of these peoples no less than 600,000 live in a 

 comparatively small area of the southeast, the districts 

 of Oeloc Soengei and Bandjermasin. These are nearly 

 all Malays, only 4,000 or 5,000 being Dayaks, who proba- 

 bly do not form the majority of the 217,000 that make 

 up the remainder of the native population of the Division. 



On account of the small white population and insufl[i- 

 cient means of communication, which is nearly all by 

 river, the natural resources of Dutch Borneo are still in 

 the infancy of development. The petroleum industry 

 has reached important proportions, but development of 

 the mineral wealth has hardly begun. In 1917 a govern- 

 ment commission, having the location of iron and gold 

 especially in view, was sent to explore the mineral possi- 

 bilities of the Schwaner Mountains. In the alluvial 

 country along the rivers are vast future possibilities for 

 rational agriculture, by clearing the jungle where at 

 present the Malays and Dayaks pursue their primitive 

 operations of planting rice in holes made with a pointed 

 stick. 



The early history of Borneo is obscure. Nothing in 

 that regard can be learned from its present barbarous 

 natives who have no written records, and few of whom 

 have any conception of the island as a geographical unit. 



