14 BRITISH BORNEO. 
eleven years after the Hudson’s Bay Charter, and twelve 
years after the date of Mr. FORSYTH’S article, Queen VICTORIA 
granted a Charter of Incorporation to the British North Borneo 
Company, which, by confirming the grants and concesssions 
acquired from the Sultans of Brunai and Sulu, constitutes the 
Company the sovereign ruler over a territory of 31,000 square 
miles, and, as the permission to trade, included in the Charter, 
has not been taken advantage of, the British North Borneo 
Company now does actually exist “as a Territorial Power” 
and not ‘“‘as a Trading Company.” 
Not only this, but the example has been followed by Prince 
BISMARCK, and German Companies, on similar lines, have been 
incorporated by their Government on both coasts of Africa 
and in the Pacific; and another British Company, to operate 
on the Niger River Districts, came into existence by Royal 
Charter in July, 1886. 
It used to be by no means an unusual thing to find an 
educated person ignorant not only of Borneo’s position on the 
map, but almost of the very existence of the island which, 
regarding Australia as a continent, and yielding to the claims 
recently set up by New Guinea, is the second largest island 
in the world, within whose limits could be comfortably pack- 
ed England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with a sea of dense 
jungle around them, as WALLACE has pointed out. Every 
school-board child now, however, knows better than this. 
Though Friar ODORIC is said to have visited it about 1322, 
and LUDOVICO BERTHEMA, of Bologna, between 1503 and 
1507, the existence of this greatisland, variously estimated to 
be from 263,000 to 300,000 square miles in extent, did not 
become generally known to Europeans until, in 1518, the 
Portuguese LORENZO DE GOMEZ touched at the city of Bruna. 
He was followed in 1521 by the Spanish expedition, which 
under the leadership of the celebrated Portuguese circum- 
navigator MAGELLAN, had discovered the Philippines, where, 
on the island of Mactan, their leader was killed in April, 1520. 
An account of the voyage was written by PIGAFETTA, an 
Italian volunteer in the expedition, who accompanied the fleet 
to Brunai after MAGELLAN’S death, and published a glowing 
