[*In Offering This Very Slight Sketch Of Selangor To My Readers As
Prefatory To The Letters Which Follow, I Desire
To express my
acknowledgments specially to a valuable paper on "Surveys and
Explorations of the Native States of the Malay
Peninsula," by Mr. Daly,
Superintendent of Public Works and Surveys, Selangor, read before the
Royal Geographical Society on May 8, 1882. I have also made use of a
brief account of the Native Malay States by Mr. Swettenham, Assistant
Colonial Secretary to the Straits Settlements Government, published in
the Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and of
"Our Malay Conquests" by Sir P. Benson Maxwell, late Chief Justice of
the Straits Settlements.]
The wealth of Selangor lies in its apparently inexhaustible tin mines.
The range of hills which forms the backbone of the Malay Peninsula
rises in places to a height of seven thousand feet, and it is from this
range that the alluvial detritus is washed down, beneath which is
deposited the layer of ore or wash, which varies from four inches to
ten feet in thickness. The supply of this ore is apparently
inexhaustible, but no veins have as yet been found. The mine of
Ampagnan only, near Kwala Lumpor, the capital, gives employment to over
one thousand Chinamen, and each can extract in a year one thousand
pounds weight of white smelted tin valued at 35 pounds sterling. This
mineral wealth is the magnet which, according as the price of tin is
higher or lower, attracts into Selangor more or fewer Chinamen.
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