xxiv] AREA OF SARAWAK 



North Borneo and Sarawak is in lat. 4 57' N., long. 115 13' E. ; 

 for to the latter belongs the entire basin of the Trusan, which 

 empties itself in Brnni Bay. 



Inland the boundaries of Sarawak are as yet rather vague, but 

 geographically the demarcation is simple, Sarawak claiming all 

 the territories between Tanjong Datu and the mouth of the Trusan 

 which are traversed by rivers flowing into the China Sea. 



I believe that the area of Sarawak amounts approximately to 

 some 70,000 square miles, which is greater than that usually 

 assigned to it, 1 for hitherto the calculation has been made on 

 Dutch charts, and in these the watershed from which flow the 

 rivers emptying into the China Sea is placed much too near the 

 coast. The rivers which debouch on the north and north-east 

 coasts have thus short courses, whilst those which run into the 

 Java and Celebes Seas are inordinately prolonged, causing a con- 

 siderable augmentation of Dutch and a corresponding diminution 

 of Sarawak territory. I therefore consider that the central chain, 

 of which Batu Puti and Batu Tibang are the highest points, 

 should be placed a degree farther to the east ; the water-parting 

 thus coming almost in the middle of the island. 



In the maps which are given in Dr. Posewitz's excellent book, 2 

 the results of the observations of recent travellers in North Borneo 

 have been used, but even in these it appears to me that the area 

 of Sarawak is less than it ought to be. Dr. Posewitz could not 

 allow the Rejang river a course of less than several hundred miles, 

 and he has thus been obliged to make it run a short distance from, 

 and nearly parallel to the coast. But I must add that the course 

 of this river in Posewitz's map is traced according to the map 

 published in the Proceedings of the R. Geographical Society of 

 London (vol. hi., No. 5, p. 256, 1881), to illustrate a paper of Mr. 

 Crocker's, who writes (p. 193) that the information regarding the 

 upper course of the Rejang was furnished by me. In fact, 

 on my return from the exploration of that river, I left a sketch- 

 tracing of its course at Kuching, which sketch is the one I used 

 in compiling the map of my wanderings. 



I find, after carefully reading Posewitz's book, which is in most 

 things extremely accurate as regards the present state of our 

 knowledge of the geography of the interior of Borneo, that little 

 indeed has been added thereto since the account of my travels 

 in Borneo which I published in 1868 in the first volume of the 

 Bollettino of the Italian Geographical Society, and which naturally 

 corresponds to what I have written in a more extended form in 



W^- The total area of Borneo is given as 285,700 square miles ; being thus 

 more than twice and a half the area of Italy. 



2 Posewitz, Borneo ; its Geology and Mineral Resources (English translation). 

 London, 1892. 



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