Next to Labuan lie the districts of Padas and Kalias, well filled with an agricultural population, quiet and fairly industrious. Their principal industry is the cultivation of the sago palm and pepper. Padas had been chosen as the starting point of the telegraph line, which has been carried across the country to Sandakan Bay, a distance of three hundred miles. It does not appear to work very successfully, as it is liable to constant interruption from the wires being broken by falling trees. My experience of Bornean forests is that trees seldom fall even during the fiercest storms if their supports are left untouched. The finest forest trees, except the Tapang, have most of their roots running along the surface of the ground, and have a very poor hold, but they are supported in their positions by innumerable creepers, which vary in size from those resembling a ship’s cable in diameter to the most delicate rattan. Cut these braces and the tree is liable to fall. This is so well known to the natives that, when clearing old forests, they only cut the principal trees partly through, except a line of the outermost ones, which are hacked until they give signs of falling. The whole line then comes down, dragging to the earth all the trees partially cut through, as if they were bound together by cords, instead of by Nature’s cables. It is probably the cutting of the telegraphic line through the forest which has weakened the natural supports, and so the trees fall. If any other telegraph line be run it would be worth while trying to make the forest trees serve instead of poles, as these appear to have rotted within the first year. From the occasional notices in the _Herald_, the North Borneo official paper, it would appear that the line was cut most of the way through primeval forest, thus opening out millions of acres of virgin land for agriculturists to develop. When the existence of this line is thoroughly understood, and its working can be ensured, it will no doubt induce those ships which trade between Australia and China to call in at Sandakan. Had the line been reliable, no doubt the Spaniards of the Philippines would have used it, in order to telegraph to their Government, instead of going all the way round to Labuan. But the great experiment in Borneo is the railway. It starts from what may be termed the Padas district, at a point on the coast called Bukau, and the first section is to the Penotal Gorge, about fifty miles in the interior on the way to the east coast. Its course, as traced on the map, will take it well south of east, and it will have its terminus in Santa Lucia Bay. I have seen no reason given why it should not be taken to Sandakan, the headquarters of the Company, and a first-class harbour. It appears a mistake to lessen the importance of the capital, unless there are strong commercial reasons, depending on the tobacco plantations, for diverting its course through an unknown country, close to the Dutch frontiers.