t by pointing to the fact that they were Queen's Officers,
whereas the Straits Settlements were at that time still under the
Government of the East India Company. Sir JAMES BROOKE held the position
of Governor until 1851, and the post has since been filled by such
well-known administrators as Sir HUGH LOW, Sir JOHN POPE HENNESSY, Sir
HENRY E. BULWER and Sir CHARLES LEES, but the expectations formed at its
foundation have never been realized and the little Colony appears to be
in a moribund condition, the Governorship having been left unfilled
since 1881. On the 27th May, 1847, Sir JAMES BROOKE concluded the Treaty
with the Sultan of Brunai which is still in force. Labuan is situated
off the mouth of the Brunai River and has an area of thirty square
miles. It was uninhabited when we took it, being only occasionally
visited by fishermen. It was then covered, like all tropical countries,
whether the soil is rich or poor, with dense forest, some of the trees
being valuable as timber, but most of this has since been destroyed,
partly by the successive coal companies, who required large quantities
of timber for their mines, but chiefly by the destructive mode of
cultivation practised by the Kadyans and other squatters from Borneo,
who were allowed to destroy the forest for a crop or two of rice, the
soil, except in the flooded plains, being not rich enough to carry more
than one or two such harvests under such primitive methods of
agriculture as only are known to the natives. The lands so cleared were
deserted and were soon covered with a strong growth of fern and coarse
useless _lalang_ grass, difficult to eradicate, and it is well known
that, when a tropical forest is once destroyed and the land left to
itself, the new jungle which may in time spring up rarely contains any
of the valuable timber trees which composed the original forest.

A few cargoes of timber were also exported by Chinese to Hongkong. Great
hopes were entertained that the establishment of a European Government
and a free port on an island lying alongside so rich a country as Borneo
would result in its becoming an emporium and collecting station for the
various products of, at any rate, the northern and western portions of
this country and perhaps, too, of the Sulu Archipelago. Many causes
prevented the realization of these hopes. In the first place, no
successful efforts were made to restore good government on the mainland,
and without a fairly good govern