If the reader will look at the map he will see that a peninsula or horn runs out from Bruni, sheltering the bay against the winds and waves from the north-west. Labuan is actually a continuation of the same, but the belt of land has been broken through, leaving only Labuan and a few little islands rising above the surface of the ocean. At the extreme point of the promontory is a lighthouse erected by the Rajah. This promontory goes by the name of Muara. The coal-beds that come to the surface in Labuan, continue in Muara, and Mr. W. C. Cowie[319] had obtained from the Sultan Mumin a concession of the coal-fields in Muara, and all rights over this district were ceded to him in perpetuity by the late Sultan in 1887. These rights confer complete and absolute possession of all the lands in the district, with power to sell, impose taxes, rents, and assessments, the possession of the revenue farms, with power to create new farms of any description, and certain judicial rights conjoined with power to inflict penalties. This Muara district, the town in which was founded by Mr. Cowie, and named by him Brooketon in honour of the Rajah, is the richest portion of the small and shrunken territory now remaining to the Sultanate of Bruni, and it remains to it, as may be seen, attached by a thread only. It is not large, but it is of much importance, as it possesses a good colliery and an excellent harbour. Previous to the opening of this colliery the population, consisting of a few Kadayan peasants and Malay fishermen, was small and scattered, and, in common with the lower classes throughout the Sultanate, led a miserable existence under misrule. Mr. Cowie found that a much larger capital was needed to develop the colliery than he possessed, without which the workings would be unremunerative. Every year entailed increasing loss, and in 1888, two years before the acquisition of the Limbang by the Rajah, he sold to him all his rights in Muara. Previous to the transfer, for want of capital, the mines had been worked in a hand-to-mouth fashion by a few coolies under a manager with but little experience, the output being confined to meeting the very limited local demand in Labuan. There was practically no plant, and only a small ricketty wharf, to which the surface coal was conveyed in buffalo-drawn waggons over a roughly constructed line.