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industrious people. They bring to market skins, mattings, beeswax, copra, cotion, fruits, hides, Lemp, horns, ivory, rice, rattans, and shells-contributing to export values from £10,000 to £12,000 per year. The fact that such exports have been constantly increasing certifies further to their interest in a govern- ment which gives them the only protection thy have ever enjoyed and puts within their reach comforts of living formerly unknown. They have, indeed, a certain civic pride, and feel honoured with government appointments as tribal | chiefs, an honour apparently to which sex is no bar, as witness a recent official announcement that Audu Muntri is appointed Government Chief at Putatan, Province Keppel, vice his mother, the Government Chieftainess. Muutri Sabu, deceased. Increasing exports hold out promise that in time they may work effici- ently the land that they know. The light duties levied upon such exports will hardly now pay for policing the districts in which the are
gathered.
cessa-
run
I
Probably neither coal nor railroad development will serve to abolish them. Missionaries have been useful in con- ducting the only schools in the company's ter-· ritory. Had they had the way otherwise than that they profess to seek, government would have worked all these years to a deficit.
CHINESE LABOUR IN BORNEO.
[December 16, 1901. THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
Of China, but the straining point might soon be waters hereabouts have become famous course pearls breed here, and equally everybody reached on articles of export intended for wider knows that they are not to be shovelled off the markets, where where they will encounter beach. But as an industry pearl-fishing can competition such as gambier, sago, rice, and A project is in hand in Sandakan to flourish only under systematic supervision rattans. or where the supply is so abundant that, organise a company to be operated in American it can be easily gathered. This section cu territory, Puerta Princessa, Palawan, and there joys neither fortune. Seed pearls are hawked deal in rattans, rubber, gutta-percha, hides, and every day;
a find
really worth having whatever else may offer, so long as the Borneo turns up only rarely. If the search may be tariff may show a profit in that course.
Since bidding for immigration is likely to called an industry, it is a most precarious one. Last year's exports were worth £260 against succeed for permanent account if it does not £1,280 in the preceding year--all of seod pearls. only improve the condition of those who may come but also make means of living tolerably Probably the London directors attach "small
easy for then, the government will probably importance to chances in this line. They seem, indeed, of late to have been coddling the hope look to other sources than customs for the bulk Present plans do not entertain that the Segaman River district contains golt. of its revennes. As this river reaches the coast and may be any proposition for white colonisation. That worked for alluvial deposits without special, was an old dream, whose awakening contented difficulty, some of the shareholders fail to itself with the growth of corporate enterprise understand why miners should continue blind to needing white management, a slow but not the easy chances thus et before them. Gold unsatisfactory process, for there are thirty or tracings in that district were announced in the more companies at work on a large scale, and There earning fairly good returns. Revenue can be Twenty years of direct government were early years of the company's existence.
much more easily derived from farming pri preceded by observations, more or less close, of has been talk of offering substantial rewards for conditions in the territory ever since this place those who would locate rich deposits, a step well vileges for opiam, spirits, pawnbroking, gambl- became a British colony in 1847, that interval worth taking. in view of the company's inten-ing, markets, birds' nests, blachar, and wharf-dues of 35 years having contributed at least some- tion to exac. from grantees one-quarter of their than from all other soure s pnt together. There thing to the establishment of native good feel-yield from reef-mining and one-fifth from dredg- is a stamp tax, a local coinage currency mainly copper but including a few notes, and returns ing toward the whites which has generallying. At every general meeting in London it prevailed. Disorder has at times taken serious seems necessary for the directors to deliver dribble in from land sales. Much as the gov- turn, but it has never had behind it wide-themselves upon the gold prospects. Thy have ernment might like to fill its treasury from spread native sympathy. There could be kept so far quite within bounds in saying that collections wholly righteous, twenty years have not been long enough to make that possible. no better evidence of friendiness than the the district has not yet developed into a Klon- discontinuance of tribal headhunting, the dyke, considering that results there are quite Farming collections suit the immigrants and abolition of native slavery, and the
are cheerfully paid. The company counts on barren. It is probably comforting for them to tion of practices which the natives sup-
think, however, that the land contains gold, and them for the future. posed, not by command but instinctively, would that when it may at last be mined company offend their new sovereign. What they know shares will advance materially. as banting-marrow was their primitive customs service, calculated to exact toll on all the streams from every passing boat. A voyager would find the passage blocked by a tangle of rattans stretched across it and securely fastened at the banks. If he knew the way of the country and wished to avoid trouble, he would look up the preemptor of that particular and pay him his price to remove the obstruc- tion. Rattan cables were as common in the Borneo streams as were lekin stations in the old days in China waters. They blocked the way at every bend. Failure to respect their signi- ficance involved heavy risks, for while fees were wholly personal, the collectors had a common interest in preventing evasion of payment, and it behoved a voyager daring enough to cut through the barriers to have his craft well defended, and under guard day and night, for he might be sure that the collectors were after him in a pack. A capture under those circum- stances exacted a penalty known as semangup. The person taken was tied to a tree, with his arms outstretched and his feet just off the ground. Then the captors approached him singly and addressed him with soft phrase, wishing him a pleasant journey to Kina Balu, begging him to convey their several respects to relatives and friends gone before to that bourne, each closing his polite appeal with a gentle spear-thrust, never more than an inch deep, into the body of the captive. Care was taken to avoid the puncture of vital parts, for that would have ended too soon the pleasure of the chase. A captive might thus last for several hours, regaled all the time with nice compliments, and with toasts to his health as he looked from his perch down upon the midday meal. He might also divert himself, if he chose, in wondering in which effects, among those of his well-wishers, he would need to search for his head, in the event of a bodily It rarely happened that a voya- resurrection. ger alone would incur the perils of cutting through a rattan barrier. When several joined in that feat, the zest of chase was stimulated by the prospect of semanguping a syndicate, a long and joyous operation, with perhaps heads enough to go round at the end. Occasionally even now a native applies to a government officer for permission to semangup someone who has mortally offended him, but the tribe among whom the ceremony was most common have def rred to official opinion, in respect to the value of human life, and work off their surplus vengeances on pigs. Moreover, banting-mar- row has become a lost art in North Borneo.
Native industry should not be dismissed with out allusion to the pearl fisheries for which the
Deliveries
Reliance for dividends rests happily upon a basis less speculative. In the mining liue, coal is no doubt to be had. A mice near this place has been opera ed with varying fortunes since Labuan was a colonial possession, with no com- pany to which to attach itself for supervision. Mishaps, due to inability to get the coal ont rather than to lack of it, forced the operators to abandon work in 1879. The present operating company finds £1 shares quoted at a shilling because flood has no respect for the share market or the other exigencies of business. at the harbour get immediate sale, offered at seven dollars per ton- or 14 shillings- a constant supply at this price insuring fine retures to the mine owners. The supply has been so in- constant that a mine down the coast bas been dumping part of its product here and getting 18 shillings per ton for it. Hope has taken another fresh start at Labuan under a new over- manager, who is convinced that he can come obstacles heretofore baffling and justify the confidence of those who have stood company in misfortune. Coal has by the
on the East coast, where been found also the outlook promises so well that Sandakan expects to become a pot of call for coaling from Hongkong to the ships on the run southern islands and Australia. If Zamboanga has similar aspirations, it is in danger of being forestalled, unless it bestirs itself to put forth substantial inducement. The railroad is wholly in the western region. Its immediate purpose will be satisfied if it can induce settlement. and the consequent increase of exports, from a soil in whose productive capabilities implicit reliance may be placed.
Light duties are charged on both imports and exports. Tobacco going out pays one dollar, or two shillings, per picul; a tax not at all burden- some to planters in view of the low rates at which they are able to obtain perpetual leases of land, and the protection which the govern- Average duties will not ment furnishes." exceed five per cent, ad valorem. There is talk of advancing them in order to appease a home hunger for dividends. Among the threatened transfers from the free to the duty list. is soda water, which comes as noar being a necessity in European households as any article imported. If this shall really occur, the afflicted will lay it to a bit of impatience in the Lew Governor, who was obliged soon after his arrival to call off an official At Home on the ground that the cases of soda that he had ordered for that occasion had not come, and who has not since then felt quite easy in his mind toward soda. Chinese might stand an advance in duty on the birds' nests and camphor, which are sent to,
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[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.]
Labuan, British North Borneo, While the bars are high against the admission of Chinese into the Philippines, British North Borneo holds its door wide open and is beckon. Human ing that class of immigration to enter. perversity finds curious illustration in the effect of these diverse labour policies in neighbouring lands, for effort applies itself quite as sedulously in Borneo to get Chinese in as it does in the Philippines to keep them out. In the Philip- pines immediate earning power may be the greater, but Borneo offers compensations which would seem to appeal to Chinese interest, such as land holdings under perpetual free lease, and license to smoke opium, gamble, and follow other home customs to which American authorities would not dare give legal sanction. The Borneo policy is well settled, the chief inducement to the governing company in agreeing to pay annuities of £2,300 to the Sultans of Brunei and Sulu for the use o the territory having probably been the prospect that here would be a welcome out- let for some of the millions overcrowding China. There are plantations turned into Chinese graveyards, many immigrants have gone home alive, and 20,00 remain. Accurate computa- tion of the number of arrivals cannot be made, for records do not run back far enough. If it be put at 100,000 in twenty years that number will not much exceed the total of Chinese ar- rivals in the Philippines in the same time, and not approach the total that would have Borneo been, had American law permitted. can accommodate 5,000,000, and would be glad to have them.
Lord Aberdeen once sail at a meeting in Lon- don of the Geographical Society, of which he was President, that Borneo contained nearly as much unknown land as any portion of the globe of equal dimensions. It was proposed to overcome this condition by filling with Chinese that part of Borneo over which the company had acquired suzerainty. North Borneo was not only to give England a strategic stronghold in the China Sea midway between Singapore and Hongkong, but it was to open a new and rich field for trade. Trade growth in twenty years up to £600,000 a year, divided about equally
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