NOTES ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF TEE 

 USEFUL MINERALS IN SARAWAK 



BY 



A. HART EVERETT, 



Resident of Bintulu, Sarawak. 



Among the numerous works that have appeared during the 

 last forty years having reference to that narrow strip of the 

 N. W. Coast of Borneo now known as the Sarawak Territory, 

 there occur suggestions that this portion of the island will be 

 found wealthy in mineral resources at some future day, when the 

 progress of exploration and a larger influx of European enter- 

 prise, shall have indicated their extent and led to their full 

 development. 



In point of fact these ideas are not of recent birth. From 

 the day when the companions of the hopeless Magelhaens, cast 

 anchor off Brunie, now some three hundred years ago, up to the 

 early part of the present century, when Hunt presented his re- 

 port on the island of Kalamantan to Sir S. Raffles, the " great 

 and rich island of Borneo" has been encircled with a fictitious 

 halo of reputed wealth in precious mineral deposits. 



It has been the office of time, remarks Temminck, to dissipate 

 these golden fancies, and whether they will ever be realised, el- 

 even seriously revived, is problematical ; but, nevertheless, there 

 does exist a certain amount of solid foundation for the idea, that 

 Borneo is well furnished with the useful metals and minerals, 

 although for the most part these are not such as would have 

 attracted the attention of the early voyagers in the East. And 

 it is in connection with this wider field — the mineral resources 

 of Borneo as a whole — that the following notes on the minerals 

 of Sarawak are offered. 



Before proceeding to enumerate the various minerals of eco- 

 nomic value heretofore observed in Sarawak, and to note their 

 modes of occurrence, distribution &c, it will be advisable to 

 glance at the goelogical features of the district of Upper Sa- 

 rawak ( Proper), both as being the only locality in which vjork- 

 able deposits of mineral ores have been discovered, and because 

 it furnishes us in a greater or less degree with an epitome of 

 the geological structure of the major part of the Territory. 



