The vegetable products are mostly indigenous, and obtainable in the primæval forests. Some few, however, such as cotton, tobacco, coffee, and cocoa have been introduced, and are only cultivated by the natives in a desultory manner. Under systematic culture, and with Chinese coolie labour, nearly all the vegetable products of tropical countries might be grown.

The mineral products are known to exist, but it is not as yet determined whether the lodes are workable, or if the metals exist in remunerative quantities. A great drawback to mining operations is the enormous rainfall. The want of British protection, and the difficulties of travel or transit inland, are against colonisation. The river Kinabatangan opens up the country from the north-east coast, and affords a good water-way by which produce could be brought down to the coast; but nearly all the other rivers to the north-west, as far as Brunei, are shallow and unnavigable, except for a mile or two near the sea; the roads inland being mere buffalo tracks, and extremely irregular on the hill slopes.

The highest land and coolest climate in the island is on Kina Balu (altitude 13,700 feet), a large mountain about five days’ journey from the mouth of the Tampassuk river. The lower slopes of this range might possibly grow good coffee; cinchona would be more likely to succeed in the cool and fresh, but humid, climate of the large spurs. The land here is in places deep and rich with forest débris. In places good red land, with belts of luxuriant bamboo amongst the sandstone boulders, was seen. In estimating the richness of the soil, the growth of a particular species of ginger common everywhere was observed, on poor soils it rarely exceeded a foot in height, but on some of the hill slopes near Kina Balu it attains a height of six or eight feet.

The bamboo is also here more luxuriant than I observed it elsewhere in the island, and the greater variety and luxuriance of undergrowth shows that the climate or soil, or both, are here better than near the coast. There are rich alluvial deposits on the plains, where wet rice, tapioca, sago, and fruits and vegetables generally, grow well. Dry or hill rice, and the cocoanut palm, succeed inland up to 3,000 feet elevation.

In Sarawak land culture has not proved to be so remunerative as the antimony and gold mines; in the north, however, this order of things might possibly be reversed. An English company has been formed for the purpose of colonising the northern part of the island, and the cessions obtained comprise the whole northern portion from Kimanis on the north-west coast to Sabuco on the east, the total area being computed at 20,000 square miles.

It seems to me, however, that Borneo is too far from the great highway of eastern commerce to attract any but the most sanguine of planters and capitalists. I saw very good land in Jahore on Gunong Puloi, and recent explorations in Perak by Mr. Murton of Singapore (as also by practical coffee planters from Ceylon, and tobacco growers from Province Wellesley) prove that, so far as soil and climate are concerned, Perak, Quedah, and Jahore offer equal advantages for land culture, besides being much nearer to Singapore and the great sea-way between England and the East.