BRITISH BORNEO. 23 
ing modern Malay and using the Arabic written character, 
whereas the aborigines possess not even the rudiments of an 
alphabet and, consequently, no literature at all. 
How is the presence in Borneo of this more highly civilized 
product of the Malay race, differing so profoundly in language 
and manners from their kinsmen—the aborigines—to be ac- 
counted for? Professor KEANE once more comes to our 
assistance, and solves the question by suggesting that the 
Mongolian Malays from High Asia who settled in Sumatra, 
attained there a real national development in comparatively 
recent times, and after their conversion to Mahomedanism by 
the Arabs, from whom, as well as from the Bhuddist mis- 
sionaries who preceded them, they acquired arts and an ele- 
mentary civilization, spread to Borneo and other parts of 
Malaysia and quickly asserted their superiority over the less 
advanced portion of their race already settled there. This 
theory fits in well with the native account of the distribution 
of the Malay race, which makes Menangkabau, in Southern 
Sumatra, the centre whence they spread over the Malayan 
islands and peninsula. 
The Professor further points out, that in prehistoric times 
the Malay and Indonesian stock spread westwards to Mada- 
gascar and eastwards to the Philippines and Formosa, Micro- 
nesia and Polynesia. “ This astonishing expansion of the 
Malaysian people throughout the Oceanic area is sufficiently 
attested by the diffusion of common (Malayo-Polynesian) 
speech from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Hawaii 
to New Zealand.” 
CHAPTER II. 
The headquarters of the true Malay in Northern Borneo 
is the City of Brunai, on the river of that name, on the North- 
West Coast of the island, where resides the Court of the 
only nominally independent Sultan now remaining in the 
Archipelago.* 
The Brunai river is probably the former mouth of the Lim- 
bang, and is now more a salt water inlet than a river. Con- 
* He has since been ‘‘ protected’’—see ante page 6, note. 
