rits, pawnbroking and
fish "farms" and from land rents and land sales--sufficient to meet its
small expenditure, at present about L4,000 a year. There have been no
British troops quartered in this island since 1871, and the only armed
force is the Native Constabulary, numbering, I think, a dozen rank and
file. Very seldom are the inhabitants cheered by the welcome visit of a
British gunboat. Still, all the formality of a British Crown Colony is
kept up. The administrator is by his subjects styled "His Excellency"
and the Members of the Legislative Council, Native and Europeans, are
addressed as the "Honourable so and so." An Officer, as may be supposed,
has to play many parts. The present Treasurer, for instance, is an
ex-Lieutenant of Her Majesty's Navy, and is at the same time Harbour
Master, Postmaster, Coroner, Police Magistrate, likewise a Judge of the
Supreme Court, Superintendent of Convicts, Surveyor-General, and Clerk
to the Legislative Council, and occasionally has, I believe, to write
official letters of reprimand or encouragement from himself in one
capacity to himself in another.

The best thing about Labuan is, perhaps, the excellence of its fruit,
notably of its pumeloes, oranges and mangoes, for which the Colony is
indebted to the present Sir HUGH LOW, who was one of the first officials
under Sir JAMES BROOKE, and a man who left no stone unturned in his
efforts to promote the prosperity of the island. His name was known far
and wide in Northern Borneo and in the Sulu Archipelago. As an instance,
I was once proceeding up a river in the island of Basilan, to the North
of Sulu, with Captain C. E. BUCKLE, R.N., in two boats of H. M. S.
_Frolic_, when the natives, whom we could not see, opened fire on us
from the banks. I at once jumped up and shouted out that we were Mr.
Low's friends from Labuan, and in a very short time we were on friendly
terms with the natives, who conducted us to their village. They had
thought we might be Spaniards, and did not think it worth while to
enquire before tiring. The mention of the _Frolic_ reminds me that on
the termination of a somewhat lengthy cruise amongst the Sulu Islands,
then nominally undergoing blockade by Spanish cruisers, we were
returning to Labuan through the difficult and then only partially
surveyed Malawalli Channel, and after dinner we were congratulating one
another on having been so safely piloted through so many dangers, when
before the words were out of