26 BRITISH BORNEO. 
they feel them or not, and that the pursuit of the dollar for 
the sake of mere possession is an ennobling object, differen- . 
tiating the simple savage from the complicated product of the 
higher civilization. The Malay, in his ignorance, thinks that 
if he can obtain clothing suitable to the climate, a hut which 
adequately protects him from sun and rain, and a wife to be 
the mother of his children and the cooker of his meals, he 
should therewith rest content; but, then, no country made 
up of units possessed of this simple faith can ever come to 
anything—can ever be civilized, and hence the necessity for 
the Chinese immigrant in Eastern Colonies that want to shew 
an annual revenue advancing by leaps and bounds. The 
Chinaman, too, in addition to his valuable properties as a keen 
trader and a man of business, collecting from the natives the 
products of the country, which he passes on to the European 
merchant, from whom he obtains the European fabrics and 
American “notions” to barter with the natives, 1s also a good 
agriculturist, whether on a large or small scale; he is muscu- 
lar and can endure both heat and cold, and so is, at any rate 
in the tropics, far and away a superior animal to the white 
labourer, whether for agricultural or mining work, as an arti- 
zan, or as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, as a cook, a 
housemaid or a washerwoman. Hecan learn any trade that a 
white man can teach him, from ship-building to watchmaking, 
and he does not drink and requires scarcely any holidays or 
Sundays, occasionally only a day to worship his ancestors. 
It will be said that if he does not drink he smokes opium. 
Yes! he does, and this, as we have seen, is what makes him so 
beloved of the Colonial Chancellors of the Exchequer. At the 
same time he is, if strict justice and firmness are shewn him, 
wonderfully law-abiding and orderly. Faction fights, and 
serious ones no doubt, do occur between rival classes and 
rival secret societies, but to nothing like the extent )ihat 
would be the case were they white men. It is not, I think, 
sufficiently borne in mind, that a very large proportion of the 
Chinese there are of the lower, I may say of the lowest, orders, 
many of them of the criminal class and the scourings of some 
of the large cities of China, who arrive at their destination in 
possession of nothing but a pair of trowsers and a jacket and, 
