BRITISH: BORNEO. A8 
Muara, indeed, signifying in Malay a river’s mouth. The 
Revd. J. E. TENNISON-WOOD, well known in Australia as an 
authority on geological questions, thus describes the Muara 
coalfields :—“ About twenty miles to the South-west of 
Labuan is the mouth of the Brunai river. Here the rocks are 
of quite a different character, and much older. There are 
sandstones, shales, and grits, with ferruginous joints. The 
beds are inclined at angles of 25 to45 degrees. They are often 
altered into a kind of chert. At Muara there is an outcrop 
of coal seams twenty, twenty-five and twenty-six feet thick. 
The coal is of excellent quality, quite bitumenised, and not 
brittle. The beds are being worked by private enterprise. 
I saw no fossils, but the beds and the coal reminded me much 
of the older Australian coals along the Hunter river. The 
mines are of great value. They are rented for a few thousand 
dollars by two enterprising Scotchmen, from the Sultan of 
Brunai. The same sovereign would part with the place 
altogether for little or nothing. Why not have our coaling 
station there? Or what if Germany, France or Russia should 
purchase the same from the independent Sultan of Brunai?”’ 
As if to give point to the concluding remarks, a Russian 
man-of-war visited Muara and Brunai early in 1887, and 
shewed considerable interest in the coal mines. * 
CHAPTER III. 
The fairest way, perhaps, of giving my readers an idea of 
what Brunai was and what it is, will be by quoting first from 
the description of the Italian PIGAFETTA, who was there in 1521, 
and then from that of my friend the late Mr. STAIR ELPHIN- 
STONE DALRYMPLE, who visited the city with me in 1884. 
PIGAFETTA’S description I extract from CRAWFORD’S Des- 
criptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands. 
“When,” says he, “we reached the city, we had to wait 
_ two hours in the grahu (boat or barge) until there had arrived 
two elephants, caparisoned in silk-cloth, and twelve men, each 
* The British Protectorate has obviated the danger. 
