Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 9, 2025
Because I was curious to see the picturesque personage around whom George Ade wrote his famous opera, The Sultan of Sulu, and because the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow had read in a Sunday supplement that he made it a practise to present those American women whom he met with pearls of great price, upon our arrival at Sandakan I invited the Sultan to dinner aboard the Negros.
The guide reluctantly admitted that, though they had no horses on the island at the moment, if some were to come, why, there was the race course ready for them. Though I don't recall having seen more than a dozen horses in Borneo, the British have been true to their traditions by building two race courses: one at Sandakan and one at Jesselton. On the latter is run annually the North Borneo Derby.
Some time ago I sent a quantity of young shoots to a Chief living on the Labuk River, near Sandakan, on the East Coast, but have not yet heard whether they have proved a success. A nasty sour smell is inseparable from a sago factory, but the health of the coolies, who live in the factory, does not appear to be affected by it.
The lease is for 999 years, but there is an annual quit-rent at the rate of $6 per lot, which is redeemable at fifteen years' purchase. At Sandakan, lots of this size have at auction realized a premium of $350.
Binding their victim to a post, the warriors of the tribe advanced, one by one, and drove their spears into his body, shouting with each thrust the messages which they wished conveyed to the spirits on the mountain. With the coming of day we pushed ahead at full speed. Soon we could make out the precipitous sandstone cliffs of Balhalla, the island which screens the entrance to Sandakan harbor.
It is, indeed, so notoriously lax in this respect that when we touched at ports in Dutch Borneo, the Celebes, and Java, the mere fact that we had come from British North Borneo caused the health officers to view us with grave suspicion. When we were in Sandakan the town was undergoing a periodic visitation of that deadliest and most terrifying of all Oriental diseases, bubonic plague.
The company would have sent the money to Jolo, of course, but the Sultan preferred to come to Sandakan to collect it; there are better facilities for gambling there.
Sandakan harbour has some thirteen rivers and streams running into it, and, as the native population is very small, the jungle has been scarcely touched, and no better locality could, therefore, be desired by a timber merchant. Two European Timber Companies are now doing a good business there, and the Chinese also take their share of the trade.
The Brunai Malays call the Chinese Orang Kina and evidence of their connection with Borneo is seen in such names as Kina-batangan, a river near Sandakan on the north-east coast, Kina-balu, the mountain above referred to, and Kina-benua, a district in Labuan.
The seasons and rainfall in Borneo are found to be very similar to those of Sumatra. The average recorded annual rainfall at Sandakan for the last seven years is given by Dr. WALKER, the Principal Medical Officer, as 124.34 inches, the range being from 156.9 to 101.26 inches per annum.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking