THE GEOGRAPHICAL OROUr OF BORNEO. 
445 
increasing end by becoming formidable to these people, who little 
care to enjoy the riches which the soil produces, particularly if they 
are obliged to gather the fruits by an assiduous labour. The princes 
who only obtain an impost paid according to the convenience of these 
usurers, find no other resource, nor any other means of making them¬ 
selves obeyed, than to solicit in their distress the assistance of the 
Netherlands government ; which, although it has the means of 
effectually succouring and protecting them, does not always feel dis¬ 
posed to make Its power respected when it is reduced to the neces¬ 
sity of using violent means. 
The number of these Chinese adventurers in Borneo only amounts 
according to some documents of the Company, to 30,000; Craw- 
furd estimates them at 36,000, a figure which Mr. de Hogen- 
drop considers to be much above the reality, but in which he is in 
error, for the approximative calculation made in 1836 carries the 
number of the Chinese dispersed in the states of the western coast 
to 130,000; the Englishman Earl gives for an approximative figure 
150,000, of whom 90,000 inhabit the Chinese districts whilst 60,000 
others are distributed in the Netherlands establishments. The Chi¬ 
nese governor of Montrado told Earl that the Chinese population 
under his orders amounted to 110,000 ; but he assures us that this 
estimate is much exaggerated. 
By old ordinances still inforee the Chinese areconsideredas Nether- 
land subjects. At Pontifinak and Sambas, the chief places of the sub-re¬ 
sidencies of the west coast, they are placed under chiefs appointed 
by Government; but more independent in the very extended dis¬ 
tricts of the interior, they form themselves into small democratical 
unions called Kongsis, under chiefs elected by the community : these 
societies are governed according to their own laws and usages, and they 
are bound by contracts with the Company’s Government to pay an 
annual contingent, a duty which they know how to evade in every 
manner and which they term a voluntary gift. 
The less considerable number of the Chinese on the south and 
east coasts causes the ordinances to be better observed there. 
The considerable sacrifices made from 1816 to 1825 to subject 
