the superb panorama which culminates in the Peak slowly unrolled.

"Look, Otto! look!" she cried. "You must say that it is beautiful even if it is English."

Though Sandakan is the largest town in British North Borneo, with a population of perhaps fifteen thousand, it has barely a hundred European inhabitants, of whom only a dozen are women. The sacrifices of the women who, in order to be near their husbands, consent to sicken and fade and grow old before their time in such a spot are very great. With their children at school in England, they pass their lonely lives in palmthatched bungalows, raised high above the ground on stilts as a protection against insects, snakes, and floods, with no amusements save such as they can provide themselves, and in a climate so hot that it is possible to venture out of doors with any degree of comfort only in the early morning or after nightfall. They are as truly empire-builders as the men, and, though they play less conspicuous rôles, perhaps, they are no less deserving of honors and rewards.

Because existence in Sandakan is made almost unendurable by mosquitos and other insects, within every sleeping-room is constructed a rectangular framework, covered with mosquito netting and just large enough to contain a bed, a dressingtable, and a chair. In these insectproof compartments the Europeans spend all of their sleeping and many of their waking hours. So aggressive are the mosquitos at certain seasons of the year that when one gives a dinner or invites friends in for bridge, the servants hand to the guests long sacks of mosquito-netting which they draw

over their feet and legs, tying the top of the sack about the waist. The open space beneath the house is usually allotted to chickens and other domestic animals, a custom which frequently results in attracting pythons and other varieties of reptiles with which Borneo abounds. While I was in Sandakan a python invaded the hen-roost beneath the house of the local magistrate and devoured half a dozen imported Wyandottes. Gorged to repletion, the great snake fell asleep. It was discovered the next morning by the servants, and the magistrate blew off its head with a shot-gun. Its mottled skin measured slightly over twenty feet.

Even in this forgotten corner of the empire, ten thousand miles from the lights of the restaurants in Piccadilly, the men religiously observe the English ritual of dressing for dinner. For when the mercury climbs to 110, though the temptation is to go about in pajamas, one's drenched body and drooping spirits need to be bolstered up with a stiff shirt and a white messjacket. That the stiffest shirt-front is wilted in an hour makes no difference; it reminds them that they are still Englishmen. As might be expected under such conditions, the Chinese bartenders at the club are kept busy until far into the night, while about once a month the entire white male population goes on a terrific spree. Considering the great distance they are brought, wines and liquors are surprisingly cheap in Borneo, and nearly every man whom I met was insistent that I should try some special concoction, which he claimed to have invented and of which he was inordinately proud. The government doctor in Sandakan special

ized on a drink which he had dubbed "Tarantula Juice," and another which he called "Whisper of Death." He assured me very earnestly that no one unaccustomed to it could take three drinks of the latter without requiring the services of an undertaker.

I once wrote in one of my books that when the English occupy a country the first thing they build is a customhouse; the first thing the Germans build is a barracks; the first thing the French build is a railway. But since visiting Great Britain's possessions in Malaysia, I am inclined to amend this assertion by saying that the first thing the English build is a racecourse. Lord Cromer was fond of telling how, when he visited Perim, a miserable little island at the foot of the Red Sea, inhabited by a few Arabs and many snakes, his guide led him to the top of a hill and proudly pointed out the race-course.

"But what do you want with a race-course?" asked the ruler of Egypt. "I did n't suppose there was a four-footed animal on the island."

His guide reluctantly admitted that, though it was true they had no horses on Perim at the moment, if some were to come, why, there was the racecourse ready for them. Though I cannot recall having seen more than a dozen horses in Borneo, the British have been true to their traditions by building two race-courses, one at Sandakan and one at Jesselton. On the latter is run annually the racing classic of Malaysia, the North Borneo Derby. It is the most brilliant social event of the year, the Europeans flocking in from the little trading posts along the coast and from the lonely plantations in the interior, just as their friends back in England

flock to Ascot and Newmarket and Epsom Downs. Epsom Downs. On the evening following the Derby is always held the hunt ball, though the only hunting in Borneo is that provided by elephants, rhinoceroses, and orang-utans.

The only other form of entertainment for the European residents in Borneo is provided by a company of Malay players, which makes periodical visits to Jesselton and Sandakan during its annual tours of the islands. Though the actors speak only Malay, this does not deter them from including in their repertoire a number of Shaksperian plays (imagine "Macbeth" played in Malay in a nipathatched hut on the shores of the Sulu Sea!), but they attain their greatest heights in "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." There are no programs, but in order that there may be no doubt in the minds of the audience as to the identities of the characters, the manager of the troupe points to an actor and announces, "This is Ali Baba." In like fashion he introduces the Forty Thieves, four actors strutting ten times across the stage in naïve simulation of the robber band. The thieves having concealed themselves behind their jars, which are really silhouettes of pasteboard, Ali Baba's wife waddles on the stage, bearing a Standard Oil tin on her shoulder, and with a dipper proceeds to ladle a few drops of cocoanut-oil on the head of each robber. While she is being introduced, one of the thieves seizes the opportunity to take a few whiffs from a cigarette, the smoke of which is plainly visible to the audience. Another, becoming restless, incautiously shows his head, whereupon Mrs. Ali Baba raps it sharply with her dipper, eliciting

from the actor an exclamation that is not in his lines. During the intermissions the clown who accompanies the troupe convulses the audience with side-splitting imitations of the pompous and frigid British resident, who, as some one unkindly remarked, "must have been born in an ice-box," and of the mustached and monocled officer who commands the constabulary, locally known as the "Galloping Major." Compared with these Malay players, the favorite laugh-makers of Broadway are dull and tame. Until one has seen them, one has never known what it means really to laugh.

§ 3

With the exception of Rhodesia and of certain territories in Portuguese Africa, North Borneo is the sole remaining region in the world that is owned and administered by that political anachronism, a chartered company. It was in the age of Elizabeth that the chartered company, in the modern sense of the term, had its rise. The discovery of the New World and the opening up of fresh trading routes to the Indies gave a tremendous impetus to shipping, commercial, and industrial enterprises throughout western Europe, and it was in order to encourage these enterprises that the British, Dutch, and French governments granted charters to various trading associations. It was the Russia Company, for example, which received its first charter in 1554, that first brought England into intercourse with an empire then unknown. The Turkey Company, later known as the Levant Company, long maintained British prestige in the Ottoman Empire, and even paid the expenses of the embassies which were

sent out by the British Government to the Sublime Porte. The Hudson's Bay Company, which still exists as a purely commercial concern, was for nearly two centuries the undisputed ruler of western Canada. The extraordinary and picturesque career of the East India Company is too well known to require comment here. In fact, most of the thirteen British colonies in North America were in their inception chartered companies very much in the modern acceptation of the term. But though these companies contributed in no small degree to the commercial progress of the states from which they held their charters, though they gave colonies to the mother countries and an impetus to the development of their fleets, they were all too often characterized by misgovernment, incompetence, and injustice and cruelty in their dealings with the natives. Moreover, they were monopolies, and therefore obnoxious, and almost without exception the colonies they founded became prosperous and well governed only when they had escaped from their yoke. The existence of such companies to-day is justified, if at all, only for certain political and economic reasons. It may be desirable for a government to occupy a certain territory, but political exigencies at home may not permit it to incur the expense, or international or international relations may make such an adventure inexpedient at the time. In such circumstances the formation of a chartered company to take over the desired territory may be the easiest way out of the difficulty. But it has been demonstrated again and again that a chartered company can never be anything but a transition stage of

civilization, and that sooner or later the home government must take over its powers and privileges.

The story of the rise of the British North Borneo Company provides an illuminating insight into the methods by which the empire on which the sun never sets has acquired many of its oversea possessions. Though the British had established trading posts in northern Borneo as early as 1759, and had purchased the whole of the northeastern promontory from some Americans, who in turn had obtained its cession from its suzerain, the Sultan of Sulu, the hostility of the natives, who resented their transfer to alien rule, was so pronounced that by the end of the century British influence in Borneo was to all intents and purposes at an end. Nor was it resumed until 1838, when an adventurous Englishman, James Brooke, landed at Kuching, and eventually made himself the "White Rajah" of Sarawak. In 1848 the Island of Labuan, off the northwestern coast of Borneo, was occupied by the British as a crown colony, and some years later the Labuan Trading Company opened a trading station at Sandakan. In an attempt to open up the country and start plantations the company imported a considerable number of Chinese laborers, but it did not prosper, and its financial affairs steadily went from bad to worse.

At about the time the nineteenth century was approaching the threequarters mark, another syndicate, known as the British North Borneo Company, obtained a royal charter from Queen Victoria, took over all the sovereign and diplomatic rights ceded by the original grants, and proceeded to organize and administer

the territory. In 1886 North Borneo was made a British protectorate, but its administration remained entirely in the hands of the chartered company, the Crown reserving only control of its foreign relations, though it was also agreed that governors appointed by the company should receive the formal approval of the British Colonial Secretary. To quote the chairman of the board of directors: "We are not a trading company. We are a government, an administration. The Colonial Office leaves us alone as long as we behave ourselves."

The government of the protectorate is vested primarily in a board of directors who sit in London, few if any of them having so much as set eyes on the great territory which they rule. The supreme authority in Borneo is the governor, under whom are the residents of the three chief districts and the magistrates who administer the six less important districts and also collect the taxes. Though there is a council, upon which the principal heads of departments and one unofficial member have seats, it meets irregularly, and its functions are largely ornamental, the governor exercising virtually autocratic power. Unfortunately for the well-being of the natives, there is no imperial official, as in Rhodesia, to supervise the company's activities. As was the case with the East India Company, the minor posts in the North Borneo service are filled by cadets nominated by the board of directors, a system which provides a considerable number of positions for younger sons and family ne'er-do-wells. Most of the officials go out to Borneo as cadets, serve a long and arduous apprenticeship in one of the most trying climates in the

world, are miserably paid (I know one official who held five posts at the same time, including those of assistant magistrate and assistant protector of labor, and who received the equivalent of one hundred dollars a month for his services), and eventually retire, broken in health, on a pension which permits them to live in a Bloomsbury lodging-house, ride on a tuppenny bus, and seek occasional entertainment at the movies.

There is no trial by jury in North Borneo, all cases being decided by the magistrates, who are appointed by the company, and must be qualified barristers. Nor are there mixed courts, as in Egypt and other Oriental countries, though in the more important cases five or six assessors, either native or Chinese, according to the nationality of the principals, are permitted to listen to the evidence and submit recommendations, which the magistrate may follow or not as he sees fit. Neither is there a court of appeal, the only recourse from the decision of a magistrate being an appeal to the governor, whose decision is final.

8 4

The country is policed by a force of constabulary numbering some six hundred men, composed of Sikhs, Pathans, Punjabi Mohammedans, Malays, and Dyaks, officered by a handful of Europeans. Curiously enough, the tall, dignified, deeply religious Sikhs and the little, nervous, high-strung Dyak pagans get on very well together, eating, sleeping, and drilling in perfect amity. Though the Dyak members of the constabulary are recruited from the savage tribes of the interior, most of them having been addicted to the national

pastime of head-hunting until they donned the company's uniform, they make excellent soldiers, courageous, untiring, untiring, and remarkably loyal. Upon King Edward's accession to the throne a small contingent of the British North Borneo Constabulary was sent to England to march in the coronation procession. When, owing to the serious illness of the king, the coronation was indefinitely postponed and it was proposed to send the Dyaks home, the little brown fighters stubbornly refused to go, asserting that they would not dare to show their faces in Borneo without having seen their emperor. They did not wish to put the company to any expense, they explained, so they would give up their uniforms and live in the woods on what they could pick up if they were permitted to remain until they could see their ruler.

But though the Dyaks make excellent soldiers, they are always savages at heart. In fact, when they are used in operations against rebellious natives, their British officers permit and sometimes encourage their relapse into the custom of head-taking. An official who was stationed in Sandakan during the native rising of 1908 told me that for days the police came swaggering into town with dripping heads hanging from their belts and that they piled these ghastly trophies in a pyramid eight feet high on the paradeground.

Though the chartered company has ruled in North Borneo for more than forty years, it has only nibbled at the edges of the country. The interior is still uncivilized and largely unexplored, the home of savage animals and still more savage men. Though a railway has been pushed up-country