Rajah Brooke

by Sir Spenser St. John

On one occasion we pitched our tents for a time on the western slope of Kina Balu, about five thousand feet above the sea, on a spot which was fairly level for half a mile in length by a quarter in breadth. There were but few trees, the ground being rocky, but the stony surface was covered by beautiful nepenthes plants, with purple pitchers, which held as much as two quarts of water. From this elevation we could see over the ranges of hills we had passed in our journeys, the reaches of many rivers, the Tampasuk plain to the China Sea beyond. It would be a perfect site for a sanatorium. Roads would have to be made, then invalids and others would come to enjoy the healthy breezes, and gain strength to make excursions over the mountain. Forty years ago I recommended the Government of India to send the least guilty of their mutineers to the north-west coast, where they would have opened up a splendid country, and our camping ground would have furnished space for the barracks required for a garrison of English troops.

In these days when mountaineers are seeking new worlds to conquer, it may interest them to read the following short description of our first joint expedition to Kina Balu. To ascend this splendid peak has, no doubt, been the desire of all those who have looked upon its noble proportions. Seen from the north-west, no grander effect can be conceived, as it rises sheer out of the plain and sweeps aloft until it attains the towering height of nearly fourteen thousand feet. Its grand precipices, its polished granite surfaces, glittering under the bright tropical rays, the dashing cascades which fall from a height so great that they dissolve in spray before they are lost in the dark valleys below, have a magical effect on the imagination, and I felt a longing, scarcely to be conceived, to explore its unknown beauties. No amount of fatigue, no suffering, no opposition could stop us when once we started from the coast, and the first time I reached the summit, it was with bare feet that left a red tinge on the rocks at every step. But all this was unnoticed as I viewed the grandeur of the scene around, the lofty peaks of every varied form, the magnificent slopes of apparently polished granite, the broad terraces, the cyclopean walls fringing the giddy precipices, the chasms, whose depths the eye could not penetrate. There was nothing that stopped our onward march, and no rest was sought until we reached the solitary southern peak and I had climbed to its very pinnacle, and rested on a spot not a yard in breadth. Then, and only then, did the glow of triumph mantle in my cheeks as my eyes rested with satisfaction on the vast panorama spread out below. Unfortunately misty clouds swept round the mountain obscuring the splendour of the scene, but they lent a powerful aid to the imagination, as through the rents in the fleecy curtain, rivers, mountains and villages were now visible, now hidden. And there, looking south, in the distance high above all, with nothing but the thin air between, rose another peak, so lofty that it was impossible to estimate its distance. In that rarefied air remote objects appear near, and the voice can be heard without an effort through a space which in the plains below it could not penetrate.

I had never before attained so great a height, and never before had I seen such flowers so brilliant and so numerous. There were rhododendrons of the brightest scarlet, or blood colour, or rosy pink, in bunches of forty blossoms, covering trees twenty feet in height. And not single trees, but masses of rhododendrons in sheltered nooks, literally bending beneath the weight of their flowers. And how marvellous were the shapes of the nepenthes, how beautiful in colour, how delicate in form!

Fourteen thousand feet does not appear very lofty for a mountain, but from the north-west you see the whole gigantic form without the intervention of other summits. In Bolivia I have looked at heights rising to over twenty-five thousand feet, but you observe them from plains twelve thousand feet above the sea; in Mexico, the highest volcano reaches to about nineteen thousand feet, but then it is usually seen from the capital, itself at seven thousand five hundred feet; and the same with the highest European mountains.

Sir Hugh Low and I were for many years the only real explorers of these mountains, and I feel a sort of paternal interest in the British North Borneo Company, as Sir Alfred Dent once informed me that it was my work, Life in the Forests of the Far East, which first suggested the idea of acquiring the north-west coast for a governing and developing company.

The north-west coast possesses two very important harbours. Gaya Bay has often been recommended as a naval station to command the China Seas. It certainly offers every facility, and would be a port of refuge in war time for our mercantile marine. In many respects, however, the Port of Labuan is more suitable for all purposes, as it not only has an excellent anchorage easily defended, but it is well supplied with coal from mines on the island itself, and is opposite the terminus of the trans-Bornean railway, now in course of construction, which would bring down full supplies of cattle and provisions from the fertile districts of Padas and Kalias. It has also the advantage of having the whole of Brunei Bay enclosed by territory under English protection, with the Sarawak Government coal mines at Muara, and the productive rivers of Limbang and Trusan to add to its supplies.

Labuan is administered, with the sanction of our Government, by the British North Borneo Company, and is likely to be one of the most flourishing of its possessions, as it is not only connected by telegraph lines with Singapore and Hong Kong, a through British line, but it must increase in consequence in these days of wars and rumours of wars.

Sir Alfred Dent acquired through an agent the concession of the north-west coast of Borneo from the Sultan of Brunei, though with some important exceptions, now in process of being handed over to the Company, as well as the north-east coast, which during the last century had been ceded to England by a Sultan of Sulu, but which we had left unoccupied; all necessary arrangements were made with the government of those islands. These concessions were first worked by a Provisional Association, and were, in 1881, taken over by the newly-formed North Borneo Company on very onerous terms, which, at the present day, it would be useless to criticise, but which left the directors with insufficient working capital to push development with any vigour.

It is not necessary to trace in any detail the history of the Company during the last seventeen years. My object being rather to give a general view of its present condition. I may remark, however, to account for its still backward state, that its progress was much impeded by a want of knowledge, on the part of both the chairman and the directors, of the country they were chosen to administer. Within these last few years this defect has been rectified, and we may now confidently expect that progress will be more rapid.

The north-east coast of Borneo presents a great contrast to that of the north-west, as the land lies low, but is in general very fertile. As long ago as 1852 we marched through the district of Tungku on Darvel Bay, and could not but admire the splendid crops which covered the earth, and the vigour of the growth of the palms and fruit trees.