plete without a reference to
the mangroves, which are such a prominent feature of the country as one
approaches it by sea, lining much of the coast and forming, for mile
after mile, the actual banks of most of the rivers. Its thick,
dark-green, never changing foliage helps to give the new comer that
general impression of dull monotony in tropical scenery, which, perhaps,
no one, except the professed botanist, whose trained and practical eye
never misses the smallest detail, ever quite shakes off.

The wood of the mangrove forms most excellent firewood, and is often
used by small steamers as an economical fuel in lieu of coal, and is
exported to China in the timber ships. The bark is also a separate
article of export, being used as a dye and for tanning, and is said to
contain nearly 42% of _tannin_.

The value of the general exports from the territory is increasing every
year, having been $145,444 in 1881 and $525,879 in 1888. With the
exception of tobacco and pepper, the list is almost entirely made up of
the natural raw products of the land and sea--such as bees-wax, camphor,
damar, gutta percha, the sap of a large forest tree destroyed in the
process of collection of gutta, India rubber, from a creeper likewise
destroyed by the collectors, rattans, well known to every school boy,
sago, timber, edible birds'-nests, seed-pearls, Mother-o'-pearl shells
in small quantities, dried fish and dried sharks'-fins, trepang
(sea-slug or beche-de-mer), aga, or edible sea-weed, tobacco (both
Native and European grown), pepper, and occasionally elephants' tusks--a
list which shews the country to be a rich store house of natural
productions, and one which will be added to, as the land is brought
under cultivation with coffee, tea, sugar, cocoa, Manila hemp, pine
apple fibre, and other tropical products for which the soil, and
especially the rainfall, temperature and climatic conditions generally,
including entire freedom from typhoons and earthquakes, eminently adapt
it, and many of which have already been tried with success on an
experimental scale. As regards pepper, it has been previously shewn that
North Borneo was in former days an exporter of this spice. Sugar has
been grown by the natives for their own consumption for many years, as
also tapioca, rice and Indian corn. It is not my object to give a
detailed list of the productions of the country, and I would refer any
reader who is anxious to be further enlightened on these a