BORNEO, after New Holland, is the greatest island on the globe. If we comprise the numerous archipelagoes by which the island is environed, this group may be said to occupy more than eleven degrees of longitude and about ten of latitude, between lat. 7° N. and 4° 20' S., and between long. 106° 40' and 116° 45' E. Its length from north to south will be about 300 leagues, and its breadth varying from 250 to 150 leagues. Its superficies, calculated by Melvin von Carnbee, and published in Le Moniteur des hides, gives Borneo a surface of 12,741 square leagues, or 6992 myriametres, which makes it 2589 myriametres greater than Sumatra, and 5723 myriametres greater than Java. A native of Portugal, Lorenzo de Gomez, was the first of the European navigators who approached the northern part of this island, in 1518, in the ship St. Sebastien, on his route to China. He says that the natives termed it Braunai or Brauni, but the aborigines do not use any name appropriated to the whole extent of the country. The seaboard is even most often un known to the savage and wandering tribes, who are separated by great distances from each other. The different tribes designate themselves by the names which they give to the rivers on the borders of which they have established their abode ; it is thus that all the Dyaks of the great river Duson (the Banger of the maps) call themselves Orang Duson, and those of the river Sampit, Orang Sampit ; Raja Brooke makes mention of Dyak tribes under the names of Sarebu, Sakarran, Lundu, Sibnuw, etc., established on the rivers which bear those names. Lofty ranges of mountains are in the centre and the north-west. Mr. St. John, in 1858, found each range looking more lofty as he ap proached the interior, but presenting one uniform aspect of forest, covering hill and valley. The great mountain Kinibaloa, in the N.E., is 13,000 feet high. The land on all sides gradually slopes towards the coast. The Sultan of Braunai claims an immense territory. The Dutch claim a territory exceeding 200,000 square miles on its western and south-eastern sides, with a population in 1881 of 1,014,547. The Spaniards till lately claimed territorial rights ; and in 1881 Great Britain allowed a British company to obtain from the Sultan 30,000 square miles and 500 miles of seaboard, with the royal rights of life and death. Labua.n has belonged to Great. Britain since the middle of the 19th century, and Sarawak to the Brooke family.
Its inhabitants are generally recognised as of the Malay, the Kyan, and Dyak stocks. The Malay are settlers along the coast from Sumatra, Java, and Malacca ; the Dyak is the name for the prior races, divided into land and sea Dyak, the latter being richer and more powerful, those of the interior being broken up into innumerable clans, some of them being tributary to the Sultan of Braunai, some of them under the Dutch in the south and west of the island, and some under the Sarawak Government. The Millanowe are on the north east of the Sarawak territory. They are of a fair complexion, and are occupied with agriculture, trade, and peaceful pursuits. The Kyan are a
powerful tribe of about 100,000 souls, who occupy the country from the south of the kingdom of Braunai right away into the interior; they strongly resemble the Dyak.
The' Dyak are generally well -made, with a muscular, well-knit frame, and are rather under than over the middle height. Their features are regular. Their colour is a deep brown, occasionally varying to a lighter shade. They dwell in very long houses, occasionally large enough to contain a community. From their supposition that the owner of every human head which they can pro cure will serve them in the next world, the system. of human sacrifice surpassed that which was practised by the Batta of Sumatra, or, it is believed, by any people yet known. A man could not marry until he had procured a human head ; and the possessor of several was distinguishable by his proud and lofty bearing. The chiefs sometimes made excursions of considerable duration for the sole purpose of acquiring heads, proceeding in their canoes to the more distant parts of the country, to which the numerous ramifications of the rivers afford them easy access. Upon their arrival near a village, if the party were small, they would take up their position in the bushes close to some pathway, and attack a passer-by unawares. A larger party would attempt perhaps to surprise a whole village; would remain concealed in the jungle on the banks of the river during the day, and at night surround the village so com pletely as to prevent the escape of the intended victims ; an hour or two before daybreak, the attack commenced by setting fire to the houses, and their victims were destroyed as they endea voured to escape. Apparently head-hunting was only general among. those tribes inhabiting the banks of the large rivers, on which distant voyages can be made with facility, the Dyak race in the northern parts of the island being content with an occasional human sacrifice on the death of a chief. The sacrifice of a cock is sacred, as with Karen and Chinese, and they believe that the Divine Being eats the spirit or essence of the offerings made to him. Head-hunting is now scarcely beard of. They are brave, hospitable, simple, and truthful, loyal, grateful, and willing to receive instruction. Chastity before marriage is not insisted on, and they marry when grown up. The men wear a narrow cloth passed between the thighs. The women have a still narrower strip, allowed to fall from the hips half way down the thighs, and affords little concealment. The clans have different languages, and they had no written character. With some Dyak tribes the couvade custom prevails. Among the Millanowe Dyaks the custom prevails of burying a slave at the foot of the excavation for a house post. The Millauowe, southward and westward, living on rivers near the sea, an industrious, intelligent people, who occasionally took heads, but have not the ferocity of the Kyan.