Selangor--Capabilities of Selangor--Natural Capabilities--Lawlessness
in Selangor--British Interference in Selangor--A Hopeful Outlook


Selangor is a small State lying between 2 degrees 34', and 3 degrees
42' N. Its coast-line is about one hundred and twenty miles in length.
Perak is its northern boundary, Sungei Ujong its southern, and some of
the small States of the Negri Sembilan and unexplored jungle and
mountains separate it from Pahang on the east. It is watered by the
Selangor, Klang and Langat rivers, which rise in the hills of its
eastern frontier. Its population is not accurately known, but the
result of an attempt to estimate it, made by the Resident in 1876, is
fifteen thousand Chinese and from two thousand to three thousand
Malays. Mr. Douglas, the late Resident, puts the Malay population at a
higher figure, and estimates the aboriginal population at one thousand,
but this is probably largely in excess of their actual numbers.
[*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.