rtion of their race already settled there. This theory fits in well
with the native account of the distribution of the Malay race, which
makes Menangkabau, in Southern Sumatra, the centre whence they spread
over the Malayan islands and peninsula.

The Professor further points out, that in prehistoric times the Malay
and Indonesian stock spread westwards to Madagascar and eastwards to the
Philippines and Formosa, Micronesia and Polynesia. "This astonishing
expansion of the Malaysian people throughout the Oceanic area is
sufficiently attested by the diffusion of common (Malayo-Polynesian)
speech from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Hawaii to New Zealand."

Footnotes:

[Footnote 1: The explanation _Sago Island_ has been given, _lamantah_
being the native term for the raw sago sold to the factories.]

[Footnote 2: A British Protectorate was established over North Borneo on
the 12th May, over Sarawak on the 14th June, and over Brunai on the 17th
September, 1888. _Vide_ Appendix.]

[Footnote 3: The Buludupihs inhabit the China or Kina-batangan river,
and Sir HUGH LOW, in a note to his history of the Sultans of Brunai, in
a number of the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society, says that it is probable that in former days the Chinese had a
Settlement or Factory at that river, as some versions of the native
history of Brunai expressly state that the Chinese wife of one of the
earliest Sultans was brought thence.]

CHAPTER II.

The headquarters of the true Malay in Northern Borneo is the City of
Brunai, on the river of that name, on the North-West Coast of the
island, where resides the Court of the only nominally independent Sultan
now remaining in the Archipelago.[4]

The Brunai river is probably the former mouth of the Limbang, and is now
more a salt water inlet than a river. Contrary, perhaps, to the general
idea, an ordinary eastern river, at any rate until the limit of
navigability for European craft is attained, is not, as a rule, a thing
of beauty by any means.

The typical Malay river debouches through flat, fever-haunted swampy
country, where, for miles, nothing meets the eye but the monotonous dark
green of the level, interminable mangrove forest, with its fantastic,
interlacing roots, whose function it appears to be to extend seaward,
year by year, its dismal kingdom of black fetid mud, and to veil from
the rude eye of the intruder the tropical charms of the country at its