[349]. Wanderings in the Great Forests of Borneo, p. 355.
[350]. Beccari, op. cit. 260, 359.
[351]. British Malaya, 1907.
[352]. S. St John, Forests of the Far East.
THE BORNEO COMPANY'S OFFICES, KUCHING.
CHAPTER XVI
FINANCE—TRADE—INDUSTRIES
A general review of the financial, commercial, and industrial progress of Sarawak will probably convey to our readers a better conception than the foregoing history may have enabled them to form of the uniform advance of Sarawak along the path of civilisation: for no better evidence of the prosperity of a country can be advanced than the growth of its trade and industries, dependent as this is upon security to life and property and liberal laws.
Of the revenue before the Chinese rebellion there are no records, as all the archives were then destroyed. Three years later, in 1860, the revenue was so insignificant as to be quite inadequate to meet the needs of the country, which then for the first time became involved in debt; a debt which was unavoidably increased in subsequent years, until it had reached a somewhat high figure for such a young and striving State, but from which, however, it has now been freed by the exercise of prudent economy, and by improvement in its finances.[[353]]