In addition to the territory in the Peninsula, the Straits 2 Settlements now include various scattered and distant islands which have been attached at different times to the Colony. These are Labuan, off the coast of Borneo, with the Cocos or Keeling Islands and Christmas Island, both in the Indian Ocean. The Cocos, about 700 miles southwest of Java, are on the route 3 of steamers sailing from Colombo to Western Australia, and possess a submarine telegraph station. They are a mere group of coral atolls, with a population of a few hundreds, engaged chiefly in preparing copra from the coconuts with which these atolls abound. They are still ruled, under the Government of the Straits Settlements, by the head of the Scotch family, Ross by name, by which they were first colonized. Christmas Island, about as large as Jersey, lies some 200 miles south of Java; it was not inhabited until a little over twenty years ago, when it was settled from the Cocos. The attraction here lies in the valuable deposits of phosphate, though there is also some good timber in the dense forest which clothes the slopes of the mountain. The population, of about a thousand, consists mainly of Chinese miners. Here we see the harbour of Flying-Fish Cove, on the 4 north coast, where there is good anchorage and a break in the steep cliffs which form the coastline; and here again is one 5 of the quarries. The island is a great contrast to the low-lying Cocos banks, with their groves of palms.
In Borneo there is no strictly British territory other than the island of Labuan; but the State of Sarawak, whose ruler is an Englishman, and the remains of the old Sultanate of Brunei, are under British protection, while the British North Borneo Company holds its territory under a charter from the Crown.
The political relations of all these islands and territories are in charge of the hard-worked Governor of the Straits 6 Settlements, whose home we see in Singapore.
From the time of its cession to us, in 1824, by the local ruler on the mainland, Singapore rapidly outdistanced the older settlements of Malacca and Penang; until, in 1867, after a period of dependence on India, the whole region started a separate existence as a Crown Colony, under the name of the Straits Settlements, with Singapore as the capital. The reason for the rapid development of this obscure island is evident on the map. (2) It commands the Straits of Malacca and the southern entrance of the China Sea; the only alternative is the Strait of Sunda, beyond the Equator, five hundred miles to the southward. It is the halfway house between India and China, and its position at a corner makes it the junction point of all the routes connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific. It is also the natural collecting and distributing centre for much of the local trade of the Malay region. As a consequence, an island less than twice the size of the Isle of Wight, and with no resources of its own worth mentioning, has become the site of one of the greatest seaports in the world.