BOTANICAL EXPLORATION IN BORNEO. 



47 



eating his breakfast off your host's choicest Mangoes or Bananas, 

 and as he looks at you with a glance recognisant, benign 

 and human, you feel that irresistible impulse of our Western 

 civilisation, viz. to step forward and smile while you ejacu- 

 late those inane syllables, " 1 — I believe I have met you 

 before!" 



Now, if you want any statistics of Borneo you can find them 

 in \Yhitaker's Almanack or in Hazell's Annual in five minutes 

 when you get home, and I shall not weary you with such details 

 here ; but I may say that Borneo is about 800 miles long by 

 GOO miles broad at its widest part, and that its area is consider- 

 ably more than that of Great Britain and Ireland. The popula- 

 tion is under 2,000,000, so that there is plenty of elbow room, 

 and land and food are obtainable at a minimum cost in labour 

 or capital. One of the chiefs there offered me a fertile little 

 valley of 500 acres or so, and his very pretty daughter, in return 

 for a shot-gun and ammunition ; and had the lady not been 

 made a factor in the bargain, I think I should have been able to 

 boast of my Bornean estate to-day. But these Bornean ladies 

 have nasty little tricks, and one of their amusements is to 

 poison their husbands or friends when they are offended at or tire 

 of them. 



The population, broadly speaking, consists of the Malays of 

 the coast-line and the Dyaks or Borneans of the interior. The 

 original Borneans do all the work, and the Malays (who are 

 presumably the Arab conquerors, now and then mixed with 

 Chinese blood) collect all they can from them in the shape of 

 taxes ; but when I was there I heard some whispers about 

 " Borneo for the Borneans," and " Home Eule." 



Brunei, the capital city of Borneo, is fifteen miles inland, and 

 stands on a great inland lake. It is sometimes called the " Venice 

 of the East," and is a water city of 20,000 inhabitants, and the 

 houses are on piles over the water just as were the Swiss lake 

 dwellings of centuries ago. 



In Brunei all communication even between one house and 

 another, or one little terrace and another, is by boat, and the 

 native market held here every morning in boats is one of the 

 most curious sights in the whole world. The Sultan, who has a 

 ramshackle old palace or island here, is nominally the ruler of 

 the country, but his real power is nil. The smaller gunboats of 



