THE GEOGRAPHICAL GROUP OF BORKEO, 
431 
The want of certain data for the elevated parts and the mountain 
.chains of the centre of the island, forces us to remain silent respect¬ 
ing 1 this immense extent of country, the knowledge of which offers 
the greatest interest for science, and which ought to repay with usu¬ 
ry the advances made by government for a regular and systematic 
exploration of this vast portion of its possessions. The Dutch Ma¬ 
jor G, Muller, whose loss is deplored by science, and who was as¬ 
sassinated with all his escort in the mountainous districts of the states 
of Kuti, if he had succeeded in his project of traversing Borneo from 
east to west,* would have been able, at the same time, to furnish 
exact notions necessary for the success of a scientific exploration of 
these savage countries. 
In the first periods of the occupation of some portions of this is¬ 
land by the Company of the East Indies, this occupation, as in other 
parts of the Archipelago, had no other end than the possession of 
factories established at different points of the coasts. Since those 
times, on Borneo, as in all other places where it fixed itself with a 
purely mercantile end, the Company found itself constrained by 
circumstances, as w r ell as by events to which these gave birth, to in¬ 
crease its power and extend its possessions; this continual augmen¬ 
tation of territory obliged this association of merchants to consider 
the means of establishing a civil administration. They very quickly ap¬ 
preciated these means of arrogating power and concluding treaties with 
the native princes their neighbours. Some real or supposed infrac¬ 
tions of these conventions drove them to the alternative of seeing 
themselves despoiled of these fine possessions or of defending them 
by arms; it was thus that peaceable traders became soldiers. The 
fortune of war proving favorable to them, they profited by it, always 
for. the interests of commerce, to augment their influence and impose 
their rule around their principal factories. Thus acting, they were 
elevated into the position of masters, almost without perceiving it, 
and they became, without wishing it, the arbiters of the lot and the 
* This project has recently been resumed and carried into effect by Dr. 
Schwaaer who, in the course of his journey, visited the place of Major 
Muller’s murder, ante p, syr— Ed, 
