BRITISH BORNEO. 88 
markets for the world’s manufactures, are great and incon- 
testable.” I quite agree with the framer of the prospectus 
that these benefits are great and incontestable, but then 
they would be benefits conferred on the world at large 
at the expense of the shareholders of the Company, and 
I presume that the source from which the shareholders 
are to be recouped is the surplus revenues which a wisely 
administered Government would ensure, by judiciously 
fostering colonisation, principally by Chinese, by the sale of 
the vast acreages of ‘‘waste’’ or Government lands, by leas- 
ing the right to work the valuable timber forests and such 
minerals as may be found to exist in workable quantities, by 
customs duties and the ‘‘ farming out” of the exclusive right 
to sell opium, spirits, tobacco, etc., and by other methods of 
raising revenue in vogue in the Eastern Colonies of the Crown. 
In fact, the sum invested by the shareholders is to be consi- 
dered in the light of a loan to the Colony—its public debt— 
to be repaid with interest as the resources of the country are 
developed. Without encroaching on land worked, or owned 
by the natives, the Company has a large area of unoccupied 
land which it can dispose of for the lhighest price obtainable. 
That this must be the case is evident from a comparison with 
the Island of Ceylon, where Government land sales are still 
heid. The area of North Borneo, it has been seen, is larger 
than that of Ceylon, but its population is only about 160,000, 
while that of Ceylon is returned as 2,825,000; furthermore, 
notwithstanding this comparatively large population, it is 
said that the land under cultivation in Ceylon forms only about 
one-fifth of its total area. From what I have said of the pros- 
pects of tobacco-planting in British North Borneo, it will be 
understood that land is being rapidly taken up, and the Com- 
pany will soon be ina position to increase its selling price. 
Town and station lands are sold under different conditions to 
that for planting purposes, and are restricted as a rule to lots 
of the size of 66 feet by 33 feet. The lease is for ggg years, 
but there is an annual quit-rent at the rate of $6 per lot, which 
is redeemable at fifteen years’ purchase. At Sandakan, lots of 
this size have at auction realized a premium of $350. In all 
cases, coal, minerals, precious stones, edible nests and guano 
