The North Borneo Herald. TUESDAY, 1ST MAY 1883. MR. L. A. SANDERS JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF TOBACCO-GROWING COUNTRY

THE NORTH BORNEO HERALD AND THE OFFICIAL GAZETTE

EDUCATIONAL SERIES BY BORNEO HISTORY

No. II - VOL.I. KUDAT, TUESDAY, 1ST MAY 1883.

The North Borneo Herald.

TUESDAY, 1ST MAY 1883.

MR. L. A. SANDERS JOURNEY IN SEARCH OF TOBACCO-GROWING COUNTRY

In company with Mr. L. B. von Donop, Superintendent of Agriculture, Mr. L. A. Sanders, who has had some years’ practical experience as a tobacco planter in Deli (Sumatra) ascended, on 1^st August, the Abai river, where the Datu Tumonggong, the Dusun Chief of the district, offered the travellers every assistance in procuring guides and porters, although it was the season of planting padi. The Datu’s house was a large one, “far more respectable than many greater native chief’s house in Deli.” Here, Mr. Sanders says, i smoked for the first time, Sabah tobacco, not in the shape of a leaf but dried and cut up. The flavor and ashes were excellent. We were served with tea, which we were told afterwards was not tea at all, but to undeceive us of that illusion it required some explanations from the Datu, the beverage being so much like tea in flavor, taste, and colour that at first we unwillingly gave in to admitting the fact by seeing the creeper whose leaves had performed the feat.

Armed with “parcel of beads, thread, needles, and looking glasses for tempting the mountaineers into hospitality on our journey”, and having procured guides and porters, the travellers reached a village called “Chenembah” where the Dusuns crowded round them from  curiosity, and in the evening they witnessed a weird scene as the natives were fishing in the river, the latter blinding fishes in the water with glaring torches and jumping through the water over stones and boulders, arranged by them for the purpose in large triangles, fortress like. The “Orang Kaya”, the Chief of Chenembah, shewed them every hospitality and afforded them information about the country and its products, and as they journeyed through the partly cleared country the scenery was most picturesque with “the glorious mountain of Kinabalu (13,698 feet high) rising majestically in the distance. Climbing steep hills and following natives paths, often better for cats than for men, looking down from heights of two thousand or four thousand feet, sometimes losing our way through, the ignorance of the guides, but we always succeeded in reaching a Dusun hut or village on the top of a mountain or in a village for the night.

Passing round to the north of Kinabalu a course was taken for Bongon, and there to Kudat; in every village we found, readily, shelter and hospitality.

The first tobacco leaves were brought to me at Kiow, on a very steep high hill, and when I saw the character of the plant, though only in a few poor leaves culled and brought to me by a native, I was amply rewarded, and knew from that moment that Sabah would be a tobacco producing country. Afterwards I saw tobacco growing in many places on the sloped of hills where padi had been cut and spots cleared for that end, and the certainty of having found what I looked for, first-rate tobacco, tended to make my trip in all respect a happy one. Back in Kudat on the 20^th August, with the trophy of green tobacco leaves mentioned in my report and which since were heated and impartially admired in Deli, from that moment establishing tobacco cultivation in North Borneo.

This interesting report fully confirms the account which Mr. Spencer St. John gives in “Forest of the Far East”. When he was ascending a slope of Kinabalu he found tobacco flourishing in the gardens at an altitude of 1,500 feet.

The late Mr. Witti also found tobacco predominating in the plantations around Kagasingan; but the Dusuns are careless in curing the leaf, and under their treatment it yields but a good second-class tobacco. At the junction of the Ginambour and Mentankab Rivers there is a tobacco market and other travelers have found plots under cultivation in other parts of the territory.

The largest native attempt to tobacco growing Mr. Sanders came across was on an extensive plain called Rachan, two hours south cast of Bongon, in Marudu Bay. The land was old chena and no care was taken in pruning or looking after the plants. They,  however, appeared to be flourishing and reached the height of six to six and-a-half feet. The Borneo tobacco is indigenous and of Palembang variety, the middle rib extending past the leaf. The leaves are broad at the base, rounding ovally towards the point. Length one and-a-half feet with a breadth of one foot. “The texture and leaves are as thin as may be wished for”, there are almost no holes, and as the rain generally falls at night, spottiness and rust are rare. The ashes if the unfermented tobacco are white and the smell of the tobacco agreeable. The leaf is fitted for cigar wrappers, but some would do for fillers. The seasons are favorable. The rains begin in the middle of August, so that planting takes place in April and May. They soil is suitable, consisting of decomposed gneiss or quartz with “humus” forms by virgin or second growth jungle.

Mr. Sanders has his doubts whether the Dusuns will do for field work. A similar fear was entertained by the first European planters in the Malay Peninsula, but it was soon found that the Malays of the country were procurable and we know that on some of the coffee estates in the Malay Peninsula, there is now a superabundance of Malays applying to be employed.

We venture to believe that the Dusuns will be induces by the Deli planters to do their field labour on the West Coast just as the Sulus are now coming in gangs for employment by the planters of the East Coast. With fair treatment and regular payments, natives gain in all parts of the world confidence and recognise the European as their master. In any case, the Chinese, who, in Sumatra, grow the tobacco for the Dutch to dry and cure, have fairly established themselves now in North Borneo and have solves the labour question.

-/ss