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How would you like to encounter that sort of thing when you were having a pleasant swim, I ask you? Compared to the crocodile of Malaysia, the Florida alligator is about as formidable as a lizard. One was captured while we were at Sandakan which measured slightly over twenty-eight feet from the end of his ugly snout to the tip of his vicious tail.
When the North German Lloyd steamer "Sandakan" left the dock at Zamboanga she had in the first cabin only three passengers, a Russian of uncertain occupation, a young lieutenant of the Philippine constabulary, and myself. We had, therefore, the pick of the deck staterooms, which is worth while when traveling within ten degrees of the equator in mid-summer.
"The billet down there," suggested the elder man, "will be no end beastly, I dare say. A tramp steamer sails from Port Said in three days for Singapore, Sandakan and the South Seas. The pay will be one hundred and fifty pounds for the job.
"I dare say," he hesitantly told me, "I have no moral right to read this. It's quite personal, yet it's unsigned. Invasion of privacy can't apply to anonymous persons, you know." He paused for a minute and indolently watched the screaming hordes of Sandakan birds as if awaiting my agreement, but I said nothing.
His Highness Haji Mohamed Jamalulhiram, Sultan of Sulu, was temporarily sojourning in Sandakan when we were there, having come across from his capital of Jolo for the purpose of collecting the monthly subsidy of five hundred pesos paid him by the British North Borneo Company for certain territorial concessions.
They slept all over their deck and appeared happy and comfortable in spite of the fact that they seemed never to remove their clothes nor to bathe; it is probable that to most of them ten days without such luxuries was not a noticeable deprivation. Sandakan is a rather pretty little town of two or three thousand inhabitants, including about fifty white people.
The sale of the opium privilege in Sandakan alone nets the government, so I was informed, something over $500,000 annually. Now, iniquitous and deplorable as such a traffic is, the British North Borneo administration is not the only government engaged in the sale of opium.
Here my two companions left the ship, so that until we reached the next port, Sandakan, I was the only cabin passenger, and when the ship's officers were prevented by their duties from appearing at the table I had the undivided attention of the chief steward, two cooks, and three waiters.
In an attempt to open up the country and to start plantations the company imported a considerable number of Chinese laborers, but it did not prosper and its financial affairs steadily went from bad to worse. As long as the company kept its representative in Sandakan supplied with funds he managed to maintain a certain authority among the natives.
JOSEPH HATTON, and a summary of his journeys and those of WITTI, and other explorers in British North Borneo, appeared in the "Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society and Monthly Record of Geography" for March, 1888, being the substance of a paper read before the Society by Admiral R. C. MAYNE, C.B., M.P. A memorial cross has been erected at Sandakan, by their brother officers, to the memory of WITTI, HATTON, DE FONTAINE and Sikh officers and privates who have lost their lives in the service of the Government.
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