n advantage of, the British North Borneo Company now
does actually exist "as a Territorial Power" and not "as a Trading
Company."

Not only this, but the example has been followed by Prince BISMARCK, and
German Companies, on similar lines, have been incorporated by their
Government on both coasts of Africa and in the Pacific; and another
British Company, to operate on the Niger River Districts, came into
existence by Royal Charter in July, 1886.

It used to be by no means an unusual thing to find an educated person
ignorant not only of Borneo's position on the map, but almost of the
very existence of the island which, regarding Australia as a continent,
and yielding to the claims recently set up by New Guinea, is the second
largest island in the world, within whose limits could be comfortably
packed England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with a sea of dense jungle
around them, as WALLACE has pointed out. Every school-board child now,
however, knows better than this.

Though Friar ODORIC is said to have visited it about 1322, and LUDOVICO
BERTHEMA, of Bologna, between 1503 and 1507, the existence of this great
island, variously estimated to be from 263,000 to 300,000 square miles
in extent, did not become generally known to Europeans until, in 1518,
the Portuguese LORENZO DE GOMEZ touched at the city of Brunai. He was
followed in 1521 by the Spanish expedition, which under the leadership
of the celebrated Portuguese circumnavigator MAGELLAN, had discovered
the Philippines, where, on the island of Mactan, their leader was killed
in April, 1520. An account of the voyage was written by PIGAFETTA, an
Italian volunteer in the expedition, who accompanied the fleet to Brunai
after MAGELLAN'S death, and published a glowing account of its wealth
and the brilliancy of its Court, with its royally caparisoned elephants,
a report which it is very difficult to reconcile with the present
squalid condition of the existing "Venice of Hovels," as it has been
styled from its palaces and houses being all built in, or rather over,
the river to which it owes its name.

The Spaniards found at Brunai Chinese manufactures and Chinese trading
junks, and were so impressed with the importance of the place that they
gave the name of Borneo--a corruption of the native name Brunai--to the
whole island, though the inhabitants themselves know no such general
title for their country.

In some works, Pulau Kalamantan, which would signify _wild mangoes