441 ON CORAL REEFS AS A CAUSE OF FEVER 
use of opium. The town is situated on the beach and divid¬ 
ed into two portions, one belonging to the natives, the other 
inhabited by the Chinese settlers; behind the town is elevated 
ground and in the distance high mountains rear their heads 
aloft ; many of the houses are built on stakes on a mud flat 
similar to what we see in the generality of Malay villages 
but which mud flats are under tidal influence. To the west 
is a narrow promontory and outside that is a large bank of 
coral, dry at half tide. Both Captain Wolfe of the Velocipede 
and Mr Wyndham a merchant and settler at Sulu, state that 
during the N. E. monsoon when the wind blows over the land 
the town is healthy, but when it changes to the S. W. mon¬ 
soon and during the continuance of that monsoon the town 
and shipping are liable to fever. During the N. E. monsoon 
if any malaria is generated on the land by fresh water swamps 
&c, it is diffused and dissipated and carried away to the open 
sea where its effects are lost, but during the S. W. monsoon 
the wind blows from the sea over the exposed coral reef, and 
brings in its train sickness and fever especially during the 
months of May and June, October and November, when the 
effects of the miasm are much felt, as in these months rain and 
sunshine alternate, while there are are no strong currents of 
wind to dissipate it; it then rises during the day and falls 
with the dew at night, adding one more to the list of localities 
more unhealthy during the changes of the monsoon when 
under the influence of coral malaria. 
Labuan. 
To conclude this chapter and part third , I will briefly ad¬ 
vert to Labuan, our new settlement on the N. Coast of Bor¬ 
neo. The majority of residents even for a short time on 
this island have suffered from the fever that seems to be en¬ 
demic there ; when severe, putting on a remittent type, when 
less so an intermittent, and in almost all cases where it does 
not cut off the patient, leaving him liable to intermittent 
attacks for many along mouth after. This fever attacks 
all indiscriminately, from the governor down to the poor 
China cooly, equally affecting the pliant constitution of the 
Kling, and the unyielding, stout and steady frame of the 
English Marine, and like all other fevers, its first victims 
are those who worship the bottle. 
To the China cooly, whose constitution, enervated from the 
abuse of opium, cannot stand up against its attacks, it may 
be,looked upon as almost fatal, and it is equally go to the 
marine whose plethoric state of body, the result of overfeed- 
