Kuching is about twenty-five miles up the Sarawak River, and contains
about thirty thousand inhabitants, chiefly Malays and Chinese,
with about fifty Europeans, who are for the most part government
officials or belong to the Borneo Company, Limited. This company is
very wealthy and owns the only steamship line, plying between Singapore
and Kuching. It has several gold mines and a great quantity of land
planted to pepper, gambier, gutta percha and rubber. The Rajah will
not allow any other company or private individual to buy lands or
open up an estate, neither will he allow any traders in the country.
It would be difficult to imagine a more picturesque town than
Kuching. It chiefly consists of substantial Chinese dwellings of brick
and plaster, with beautiful tile-work of quaint figures, while temples
glittering with gold peep out of thick, luxuriant, tropical growth. Two
miles out of the city you can lose yourself in a dense tropical forest
of the greatest beauty, and in the background is a chain of mountains,
some of them of extraordinary shape. The reigning monarch or Rajah
is an Englishman, Sir Charles Brooke, a nephew of Sir James Brooke,
the first Rajah, who was an officer in the British Navy and who,
after conquering Malay pirates, was made Rajah of the country by the
grateful Dayaks.
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