r suitor shall
establish his social position in the tribe by acquiring a respectable
number of heads, just as an American girl insists that the man she
marries must provide her with a solitaire, a flat and a flivver.

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 from Jesselton for something over a hundred miles,
both road and rolling-stock leave much to be desired, the little
tin-pot locomotives not infrequently leaving the rails altogether and
landing in the river. Some years ago an attempt was made to build a
highway across the protectorate, from coast to coast, but after sixty
miles had been completed the project was abandoned. It was known as the
Sketchley Road and ran through a rank and miasmatic jungle, it being
said that every hundred yards of construction cost the life of a
Chinese laborer and that those who were left died at the end. Today it
is only a memory, having long since been swallowed up by the
fast-growing vegetation.

[Illustration: Dusun women

The Dusuns, who are found in the jungles of the interior. represent a
very low state of civilization]

[Illustration: Dyak head-hunters of North Borneo

Every Bornean girl demands that her suitor shall establish his social
position by acquiring a few heads]

The company has taken no steps toward establishing a system of public
schools, as we have done in the Philippines, for it holds to the
outworn theory that, so far as the natives are concerned, a little
learning is a dangerous thing. Perhaps the company is right. Were the
natives to acquire a little learning it might prove dangerous--for the
company. There are a few schools in North Borneo, but they are
maintained by the Protestant and Roman Catholic missions and are
attended mainly by Chinese. Whether they have proved as potent an
influence in the propagation of the Christian faith as their founders
anticipated is open to doubt. When I was in Sandakan I made some
purchases in the bazaars from a Chinese lad who addressed me quite
fluently in my own tongue.

"How does it happen that you speak such good English?" I asked him.

"Go to school," he grunted, none too amiably.

"Where? To a public school?"

"No public school. Church school."

"So you're a good C