e opened their principal
stations.

Of the three mentioned, the more striking is that of Sandakan, which is
15 miles in length, with a width varying from 11 miles, at its entrance,
to 5 miles at the broadest part. It is here that the present capital is
situated--Sandakan, a town containing a population of not more than
5,000 people, of whom perhaps thirty are Europeans and a thousand
Chinese., For its age, Sandakan has suffered serious vicissitudes. It
was founded by Mr. PRYER, in 1878, well up the bay, but was soon
afterwards burnt to the ground. It was then transferred to its present
position, nearer the mouth of the harbour, but in May, 1886, the whole
of what was known as the "Old Town" was utterly consumed by fire; in
about a couple of hours there being nothing left of the _atap_-built
shops and houses but the charred piles and posts on which they had been
raised above the ground. When a fire has once laid hold of an atap town,
probably no exertions would much avail to check it; certainly our
Chinese held this opinion, and it was impossible to get them to move
hand or foot in assisting the Europeans and Police in their efforts to
confine its ravages to as limited an area as possible. They entertain
the idea that such futile efforts tend only to aggravate the evil
spirits and increase their fury. The Hindu shopkeepers were successful
in saving their quarter of the town by means of looking glasses, long
prayers and chants. It is now forbidden to any one to erect atap houses
in the town, except in one specified area to which such structures are
confined. Most of the present houses are of plank, with tile, or
corrugated iron roofs, and the majority of the shops are built over the
sea, on substantial wooden piles, some of the principal "streets,"
including that to which the ambitious name of "The Praya" has been
given, being similarly constructed on piles raised three or four feet
above high water mark. The reason is that, owing to the steep hills at
the back of the site, there is little available flat land for building
on, and, moreover, the pushing Chinese trader always likes to get his
shops as near as possible to the sea--the highway of the "prahus" which
bring him the products of the neighbouring rivers and islands. In time,
no doubt, the Sandakan hills will be used to reclaim more land from the
sea, and the town will cease to be an amphibious one. In the East there
are, from a sanitary point of view, some points o