"Pax report of the proceedings at the
British North Borneo Company has reach-annual meeting of the shareholders in the edu. It is accompanied by a long report on the territories, their resources and Festable future by Mr. Crocker, the ndon manager of the company, who administered its affairs in Borneo after \the departure of Mr. Treacher and pending the appointment of that gentleman's successor. The speech.of the Chairman, Sir Rutherford Alcock, at the annual meeting was cheerful. Hope, it may have been noticed, burns eternal in a chairman's breast as long as there anything, even an airy nothing, to sustain it. But in this case there is a good deal of substantial progress in North Borneo on which to feed Sir Rutherford's hopes. It has been manifest for something like two years that the prospects of the British North Borneo Company were brightening. More attention was being given to it; its timber had found a market in China its tobacco had been valued at very re= munerative prices in Europe; and numbers of the indefatigable Chinese had begun or were working plantations of various kinds. The speech of the Chai man is mainly occupied with the flatter-prospects which tobacco cultivation holds out to capitalists and to the company. "'There had been a large influx of capital for investment in laud," he said, "chiefly for tobacco cultivation, and by many applicants of considerable experience in that particular line of business in Deli and elsewhere." From centres of the tobacco trade in Europe, such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Antwerp and Bremen, applications had mostly come for concessions, Some 150,000 acres had been sold for tobacco planting alone during the past. year, and applications for 140,000 more had been received during the last four months. The report furnished to the directors by their manager show how important tobacco is to the future of the Company. The export from Deli has been 140,000 bales or about 25 millions of pounds of tobacco, annually grown on some 255,000 acres, which is considerably less than the quantity of land already sold by the Company for the cultivation of the leaf. When the export of North Borneo tobacco reaches that of Deli the duty will give an annual revenue of $247,000. After disposing of the300,000 acres for tobacco ing the Company retains 600,000 acres fit for the same purpose besides other lands on the rivers without permission.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.