662 
THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. [April 2, 1888. 
plicatioas made for land ia Province] Dent. In all 
the applications for laud cover over 200,000 acres, and 
from sigus and indications the Land Office is likely to 
book many more before the applicants cry a halt. 
From the above it will be seen that the Commissioner 
of Lands has had, and is likely to have his hand fall, 
a fact upon which we may fairly congratulate the 
Territory. 
It is not, however, for Tobacco alono that land has 
been taken up. The British Borneo Trading and 
Planting Company has opened an Estate on the fciega- 
liud river, and at Boccara, a few miles distant from the 
capital in Si'idakan Bay. Mr. Alexander Walker, a 
planter of experience in Mysore and Coorg, has put 
down piaeapples and Manila hemp at Baccaro, for the 
purpose of treating the fibre with Death's patent fibre 
machine, for which the Company have bought the 
right for Briti-h North Borneo. In the Segaliud, pep- 
per is being tried. Near Kudat, Mr. Christian has a 
plantation of Liberian Coffee, which is looking very 
well, and the bushes coming on fast. At Tamoy on 
the Kinabatangan are some three hundred sago palms 
which are looking very well, and the natives Hp the 
river are anxious to secure cuttings to plant valuable 
product on a larger scale. Arrangements have been 
made, so we understand, for planting out the Wil- 
loughbeia rubber which being an indigenous product 
is likely to prove a remunerative speculation. In 
all, the amount of land taken up, and applied for 
at the Lands Office for all these various products 
adds up to 220,000 acres. 
Mining, — In mining matters we have to note the ar- 
rival of Messrs. Skertchly and Allard, representing 
the British Borneo Gold Mining Company. Mr. Sker- 
tchly has made a flying trip to the Segama and Bole 
rivers in the neighbourhood of Itok Batu and from what 
he has seen of that part of the river he is sanguine of 
a field near the head of the river that will pay. Cap- 
tain Beeston with a party of four Europeans left 
Sandakan in August last to explore the sources of the 
Segama. His report will be found in another column. 
It is the opinion of the whole party that an extensive 
and payable field is awaiting development ; the extent 
of whice it is at present impossible to estimate. Above 
a certain point on the main river, and from thence to 
the head waters, the country is composed of slates, 
diorites and serpetines, the favourite Australian gold 
formation, all the affluents, creeks, gullies and ravines 
carrying gold in addition to the main river, while 
quartz reefs carrying gold are in great numbers and 
of large size. The expedition were four months away 
from Sandakan returning in the middle of December. 
— British North Borneo Herald. 
Indian coolies foe dutch colonies. 
I a our leading columns, attention is drawn to the 
negociations for extending the Indian Emigration Act 
to Netherlands India. In connection with the subject 
we reproduce the following extract from a paper on 
the Agricultural Resources of India read before the 
Society of Arts, by Sir E. C. Buck, on the 25th 
Ja mary 1885. He said ; — 
I now pass to a subject which has not always received 
the attention which I think it merits emigration. 
As there is beyond England a "Greater 
Britain," so there is beyond India a " Greater India." 
I do net mean a greater Iudia for the Empire, but 
a greater India for the five-acre holders, and the 
surplus members of their families. To whatever nation 
the proprietors may belong, the equatorial sea-girt 
lands offer an unlimited labour market. I have al- 
ready indicated their superiority to India in the absence 
of any struggle with desiccation. The fact is that 
they have a moist, equable, not unpleasant and ex- 
tremely fertilising climate all the year round. In 
Java, for instance, there is a little rain every day. 
In an interview, which I was permitted to have 
with the Governor-General of the Dutch Indies, his 
first words were : " We in India do not suffer from 
famines as you do in British India." (India to the 
Dutch is not British but Dutch India.) So it is 
throughout the equatorial sea-watched lands, inolusiTi 
of Northern Australia, and parts of Africa and South 
America. I have n<>t figures at hand to show tho 
magnitude of size as compared with India, when I 
mention that if a line be drawn fmm Calcutta to 
Bombay, the whole of India below that line will be 
just equal to Borneo. But if we compare culturable 
xand with culturable land, it is probable that Borneo 
is double the size. Nature, however, in bestowing 
rich vegetable wealth on these regions, has accom- 
panied her gift with the drawback of a lazy popu- 
lation, lazy beoause the climate is enervat- 
ing, and because nature pours food into their 
lap. They are not braced up by the hard fight with 
nature which produee« the patient, sinewy and hard- 
working Indian cooly. So it happens, therefore, that 
the capitalists in the Fiji Islands from which the 
Australians in vain attempted to obtain sufficient labour 
for their tropical lands, have now themselves procured 
labour from India. Is not this a significant fact ? So 
again, the Governor of the Straits Settlements, to which 
colony I was deputed on a mission connected with 
emigration, sent me the other day up to the top of 
the mountain range between Siam and the protected 
States of the Malay Peninsula, in order that I might 
see the coffee berries rotting on the bushes for 
want of Indian labourers to pluck them. I hope that 
arrangements are now such that he can get the labourers 
he wants, and there will henceforth be the same ebt 
and flow of Indian labour to the Malay Peuinsula thas 
there is to Burma and Ceylon, to which countries 
thousands of agriculturists migrate — like swallows — 
every year. Rather, perhaps, I may compare them 
to a_ line of ants, which go backwards and forwards 
to rich heaps of grain, from which they bring back 
a welcome store to their own homes. This is the point. 
By his labour abroad, the Indian agriculturist accumu- 
lates a capital to be expended on the five-acre farm 
at home, and that is, above all things, what is wanted, 
not an increase in the number of five-acre farms, but 
expenditure of more capital on those existing. It is 
often said that, while there is waste land in India, 
why send labour abroad ? I have given one reason, but 
there are two other strong reasons. 
One is that the Indian labourer cannot settle 
without a capitalist protector, and that there are 
few capitalists ready to risk money in new land in 
India ; they make more and risk less by lending money 
on the cultivated area — whereas in the " Greater India " 
every capitalist is (like Sir F. Weld's coffee planters) 
ready to give (at once,) double wages. The other reason 
is that if we neglect any opportunity of letting the 
labour market be supplied by Indian cultivators, it 
will be occupied by Chinese, the only other labourers 
of the East to whom a hard struggle with nature 
in a dry climate has given energy and patience. In 
1883, 100,000 Chinese went to British Malay possessions 
against 4,000 Indians. 
Sir Hugh Low in the discussion on the paper said :— 
He had had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Buck when 
on the mission to Siam to which he had referred, and 
he was thoroughly satisfied that there was a great 
field for emigration there. They got large numbers of 
Chinese, who were very useful for many purposes, but 
they did not take much to agriculture. The object 
of the Chinese seemed to be to make money as quickly 
as possible, and mining paid them better than agricul- 
ture. When Mr. Buck was there, it seemed to be a 
question with the Indian Government whether its 
subjects should be permitted to migrate freely to this 
land of promise, where Mr. Buck saw them earning 
wages far beyond anything they could get in India ; 
where they were well fed, well clothed, and although 
they were not so well housed as he should like them 
to be, the climate was genial, and the housing was not 
of much importance. That country was very anxious 
to induce them to come, and since he left, a year 
ago, the regulations were so modified that there was 
a fair chance now, he believed, of getting a sufficient 
supply of labour, which was the only thing necessary 
for cultivation. An ordinary man from Madras, who 
got in his own country 6 to 7 rupees a month, would 
easily get 12 to 15 dollars a month in Perak ;. and it 
