Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait121878roya).pdf/41

 NOTES ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE USEFUL MINERALS IN SARAWAK

the numerous works that have appeared during the last forty years having reference to that narrow strip of the N. W. Coast of Borneo now known as the Sarawak Territory, there occur suggestions that this portion of the island will be found wealthy in mineral resources at some future day, when the progress of exploration and a larger influx of European enterprise, shall have indicated their extent and led to their full development.

In point of fact these ideas are not of recent birth. From the day when the companions of the hopeless Magelhäens, cast anchor off Brunie, now some three hundred years ago, up to the early part of the present century, when Hunt presented his report on the island of Kalamantan to Sir S. Raffles, the "great and rich island of Borneo" has been encircled with a fictitious halo of reputed wealth in precious mineral deposits.

It has been the office of time, remarks Temminck, to dissipate these golden fancies, and whether they will ever be realised, or even seriously revived, is problematical; but, nevertheless, there does exist a certain amount of solid foundation for the idea, that Borneo is well furnished with the useful metals and minerals, although for the most part these are not such as would have attracted the attention of the early voyagers in the East. And it is in connection with this wider field—the mineral resources of Borneo as a whole—that the following notes on the minerals of Sarawak are offered.

Before proceeding to enumerate the various minerals of economic value heretofore observed in Sarawak, and to note their modes of occurrence, distribution &c., it will be advisable to glance at the goelogicalgeological [sic] features of the district of Upper Sarawak (Proper), both as being the only locality in which workable deposits of mineral ores have been discovered, and because it furnishes us in a greater or less degree with an epitome of the geological structure of the major part of the Territory.