46 BRITISH’ BORNEO. 
inferior to Welsh, was superior to Australian, and well report- 
ed on by the engineers of many steamers which had tried it; the 
vessels of the China squadron and the numerous steamers 
engaged in the Far East offered a ready market for the coal. 
In their effort to make a “show,” successive managers have 
pretty nearly exhausted the surface workings and so honey- 
combed the seams with their different systems of developing 
their resources, that it would be, perhaps, a difficult and ex- 
pensive undertaking for even a substantial company to make 
much of them now.* 
It is needless to add that the failure to develop this one in- 
ternal resource of Labuan was a great blow to the Colony, and 
on the cessation of the last company’s operations the revenue 
immediately declined, a large number of workmen—European, 
Chinese and Natives—being thrown out of employment, 
necessitating the closing of the shops in which they spent 
their wages. It was found that both Chinese and the Natives 
of Borneo proved capital miners under European supervision. 
Notwithstanding the ill-luck that has attended it, the little 
Colony has not been aburden on the British tax-payer since 
the year 1860, but has managed to collect a revenue—chiefly 
from opium, tobacco, spirits, pawnbroking and fish ‘ farms’’ 
and from land rents and land sales—sufficient to meet its 
small expenditure, at present about £4,000 a year. There 
have been no British troops quartered in this island since 
1871, and the only armed force is the Native Constabulary, 
numbering, I think, a dozen rank and file. Very seldom are 
the inhabitants cheered by the welcome visit of a British gun- 
boat. Still, all the formality of a British Crown Colony is 
kept up. The administrator is by his subjects styled “ His 
Excellency’? and the Members of the Legislative Council, Na- 
tive and Europeans, are addressed as the “Honourable so and 
so.” An Officer, as may be supposed, has to play many parts. 
The present Treasurer, for instance, is an ex-Lieutenant of 
* Since the above was written, a fifth company—the Central Borneo Com- 
pany, Limited, of London—has taken in hand the Labuan coal and, finding 
plenty of coal to work on without sinking a shaft, confidently anticipate success, 
Their £1 shares recently went up to see 
