SOME nations are born; others are made--such as the new nation of Malaysia, which is coming to life under the guidance of the man on TIME'S cover this week. Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman. It is a complex and colorful story, and one for which we have devised a different method of telling.

The cover was painted by one of Australia's top artists, William Dobell. Inside, in the World section, you will find eight pages of color photographs, which seek to capture the primitiveness, the modernity, the ruggedness and the beauty of this new island nation, whose principal connecting highway will be the sea. Along with the photographs goes a vivid map by R. M. Chapin Jr., showing Malaysia's divisions, topography, population and crops. And after this introduction comes the three-page cover story on the Tunku, written by Contributing Editor John Gregory Dunne.

This oddly assembled, but imaginatively conceived country depends more than anything else on the popularity and sound sense of the Tunku, whom Hong Kong Bureau Chief Charles Mohr describes as "one of the most relaxed, cheerful and modestly friendly cover subjects" he has ever interviewed. Describing one youthful escapade, Tunku commented, "I'm a lazy man." An aide watched in evident distress as Mohr wrote it down. Tunku merely chuckled: "It's too late now." A man so ready to concede his own mistakes, Reporter Mohr concluded, could count on justified pride in many achievements.

It fell to Jerry Schecter to cover the outer provinces--North Borneo, Sarawak and Brunei--and he found it "the most fascinating assignment in nearly three years out here." He felt like James Brooke, the "white rajah," landing in Sarawak in the 18405 and seeing "what no educated eye had ever gazed on." In the jungle frontier, he retraced the steps of Conrad and was disconcerted to find characters still liv ing who might have stepped out of a Conrad novel.

Schecter had his share of roughing it--on the ground, and in the air flying with Borneo Airways "over endless jungles in the worst storms in 30 years." But upcountry among the Ibans (or Sea Dyaks), whose life is simple, tedious and poor, he was greeted with a traditional welcoming ceremony called the bedara, offered a wine to appease the spirits he brought with him, and a brass bracelet to signify friendship. Schecter cabled home: "I suppose it's work, but camping in a longhouse with bare-breasted girls who gently tip cups of sweet rice wine to your lips is more like an ex-New York writer's idea of nirvana."

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