Note 12 — Chapter X · THE KINGDOM OF BORNEO PROPER.

I may notice that many of the under estimates of the population of this city arise from reckoning the houses at two thousand, and multiplying that number by five, as the average of a family. But in Brunei this system will not apply, as to test it, we have made above a hundred inquiries of different men, as to the amount of inhabitants in each of their houses, and the highest was the sultan, with seventy in his palace, while the lowest was seven in a small fisherman’s hut. I think in placing the average at fifteen, and reducing the number of houses, I am understating the population, which is considered by many to exceed forty thousand.