British Borneo: Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North BorneoTreacher, W. H. (William Hood), Sir
History
British Borneo: Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo
Treacher, W. H. (William Hood), Sir
Great Britain -- Colonies -- Asia; Labuan; Sabah; Sarawak (Malaysia)
Being so near the equator, roughly speaking between N. Latitudes 4 and
7, North Borneo has, unfortunately for the European residents whose lot
is cast there, nothing that can be called a winter, the temperature
remaining much about the same from year's end to year's end. It used to
seem to me that during the day the thermometer was generally about 83 or
85 in the shade, but, I believe, taking the year all round, night and
day, the mean temperature is 81, and the extremes recorded on the coast
line are 67.5 and 94.5. Dr. WALKER has not yet extended his stations to
the hills in the interior, but mentions it as probable that freezing
point is occasionally reached near the top of the Kinabalu Mountains,
which is 13,700 feet high; he adds that the lowest recorded temperature
he has found is 36.5, given by Sir SPENCER ST. JOHN in his "Life in the
Forests of the Far East." Snow has never been reported even on
Kinabalu, and I am informed that the Charles Louis Mountains in Dutch
New Guinea, are the only ones in tropical Asia where the limit of
perpetual snow is attained. I must stop to say a word in praise of
Kinabalu, "the Chinese Widow,"[20] the sacred mountain of North Borneo
whither the souls of the righteous Dusuns ascend after death. It can be
seen from both coasts, and appears to rear its isolated, solid bulk
almost straight out of the level country, so dwarfed are the
neighbouring hills by its height of 13,680 feet. The best view of it is
obtained, either at sunrise or at sunset, from the deck of a ship
proceeding along the West Coast, from which it is about twenty miles
inland. During the day time the Widow, as a rule, modestly veils her
features in the clouds.
The effect when its huge mass is lighted up at evening by the last rays
of the setting sun is truly magnificent.
On the spurs of Kinabalu and on the other lofty hills, of which there is
an abundance, no doubt, as the country becomes opened up by roads many
suitable sites for sanitoria will be discovered, and the day will come
when these hill sides, like those of Ceylon and Java, will be covered
with thriving plantations.
Failing winter, the Bornean has to be content with the the change
afforded by a dry and a wet season, the latter being looked upon as the
"winter," and prevailing during the month of November, December and
January. But though the two seasons are sufficiently well defined and to
be depended upon by planters, yet there is never a month during the dry
season when no rain falls, nor in the wet season are fine days at all
rare. The dryest months appear to be March and April, and in June there
generally occurs what Doctor WALKER terms an "intermediate" and
moderately wet period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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