Excerpt from Where the Strange Trails Go Down: Sulu, Borneo, Celebes, Bali, Java, Sumatra, Straits Settlements, Malay States, Siam, Cambodia, Annam, Cochin-China I had planned, therefore, that this should be a light hearted, care-free, casual narrative. And so, in parts, it is. But more serious things have crept, almost im perceptibly, into its pages. The achievements of the Dutch empire-builders in the Insulinde, the conditions which prevail under the rule of the chartered company in Borneo, the opening-up of indo-china and the Malay Peninsula, the regeneration of Siam, the epic strug gle between civilization and savagery which is in progress in all these lands - these are phases of Malay sian life which, if this book is to have any serious value, I cannot ignore. That is why it is a melange of the frivolous and the serious, the picturesque and the prosaic, the superficial and the significant. If. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.