Page 9 - Malaysia by John Russel Denyes

Kina Balu in Borneo, 13,698 feet, and Snowy
Mountain, 14,635 feet, and Mount Wilhelmina in
New Guinea, 15,580 feet.
The Malay Peninsula is about a thousand miles
long and has an area of 90,000 square miles. Java
is slightly larger than New York, 50,557 square
miles, including the small island of Madura.
Sumatra has 159,741 square miles, or as many as
New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and two-thirds of
Indiana. Borneo has 289,843 square miles. If
England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales with the
Irish Sea were put down in Borneo there would be
a strip of jungle a hundred miles deep all around
them. Celebes has 72,000 square miles and New
Guinea 309,710.

Population It is impossible to give the exact
population of Malaysia, for there
still remain large sections of the various islands
which cannot be said to have been really explored.
No census has been taken, but the people are
roughly estimated at about fifty million. Of
these there are in the Malay Peninsula about
three million; in Sumatra, five million; in Java,
thirty-six million ; in Borneo, two and a half mil-
lion; in Celebes, two and a half million; New
Guinea, one million.

Java is the most densely populated place in the
world, but there are considerable sections of Java
which are sparcely occupied. Java can support a
population of forty-five millions. Sumatra could
take care of a hundred millions, the Malay Penin-
sula of fifty millions, Borneo one hundred and
twenty-five millions, Celebes forty millions. New
Guinea and the other islands one hundred and
fifty millions. In other words Malaysia could pro-
vide a home and food for one-third of the whole
human race.
3