The adventures of our young friends, Frank Bassett and Fred Bronson, up to the time of their departure from Java, have been told in previous volumes.[1]
At the end of the first day the Osprey bore away to the eastward, near the island of Banca, famous for its mines of tin; and on the following morning the coast of Borneo was in sight. The boys declared their inability to discover any difference between Borneo and Sumatra when seen from the deck of a ship, as the general appearance of the land was the same.
"Very naturally that is the case," said the Doctor. "Both islands are tropical, and have the same characteristics in the way of mountains and valleys, and nearly all the trees of one are to be found on the other. The animal products are nearly alike, though the naturalists have found certain things in Borneo that do not exist in Sumatra, and vice versa. Now, tell me, please, which is the larger island of the two?"
"Borneo is the larger," Fred answered; "it is about 850 miles long by 650 broad in its widest part, and is estimated to contain nearly 300,000 square miles. Sumatra is 200 miles longer than Borneo, but only 250 wide, and its area is thought to be not far from 160,000 square miles."
"Quite right," responded the Doctor; "and now it's Frank's turn. What are the populations of the islands?"
"The book we have just been reading," was the reply, "says that Sumatra has between three and four millions of inhabitants, while Borneo has less than 3,000,000; therefore, Borneo must be very thinly peopled."
"To give you an idea of the density of the population, we will make a comparison. The Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland," Doctor Bronson continued, "has more than 30,000,000 of inhabitants, with an area no larger than that of Sumatra, and far less than that of Borneo. Mr. Wallace, in his 'Malay Archipelago,' says the whole of the British Islands might be set down in Borneo, and would be surrounded by a sea of forests. Here is a map in which Borneo and the British Isles have been drawn to the same scale, and you see that Mr. Wallace's statement is entirely correct."
THE BRITISH ISLES AND BORNEO COMPARED.