62 
Greenland, the largest* piece of isolated land on the globe, will 
account for the enormous extent of almost uninhabited and 
even unexplored territory in the interior, as compared with more 
remote islands like Celebes and Madagascar, and^ in fact, every 
other great island, except New Guinea and Formosa. 
The area of Borneo is variously computed at from 263,000 to 
290,000 square miles, t or about twelve times the size of Ceylon, 
seven times that of Java, and nearly four times that of Great 
Britain. The whole of the British Isles, including Ireland and 
the seas surrounding them, can be placed in Borneo -without oc- 
cupying more than a part of the space, as can be seen by drawing 
a map to scale. It has a coast -line of over 2,000 miles, which 
is less indented than most of tbe large islands of the Archipe- 
lago, the few spacious bays and deep-water harbours it pos- 
sesses being in the North, where the coast is higher and more 
abrupt. As a rule, the shores of Borneo are bordered by a 
broad margin of lowland and swamp, from 30 to 50 miles broad, 
showing recent alluvial formation. New l^d, as in Landak, 
is known to have been gained from the sea during the last 
four centuries, and from other signs the coast-line of Borneo 
is certainly extending. Its bays are neither so deep or so 
numerous as to interfere with the regularity of its contour. 
For its size, it possesses but few really navigable rivers, all that 
* The area of 3Sew Ghiinea has been reeeatly computed at 312,000 square miles, or 
some 40,000 in excess of Borneo, but its verT outline is still uneertam, 
t 'Iht'ie has hoea some confusion as to this area, partly ttrough tlie use of mih in 
difl\;rent mjusi s. In the new Encuchpadiff Bnttanka it m said that " it^ whole arta is 
'** estimated by jVIexvillk vqs Cop.nbie at 12,745 sqimi'i^ miles.'' In Keith 
Johnston's Plq/skal Gi^uijruphtf (IhsO) it is statwl— " its length is more thiin 800 miles 
to S- ; its breadth is more than 000 milc-a E. to W." In Wall^vcii's Australia 
(1879)— " its length is more than &50 English miles ; its breadth is more than 600 
'* EBglish miles.'* The true figures are ^eatwt leuffth N. to 8, &om Point Sampan- 
Mangi at Slarudu Bay to South Point (Tanjonpr Sflatan), tJ90 miles ; fi:reatc3t brtudth 
E. to W. fiom Point Kanvuiigau to the moiitli nf the Eiver Sambas, (iOo mUos. Area 
263,000 %\\xi^ milei, at measured on BarNKMis's large Map of 1879. 
