supplies most of the surrounding islands with their daily bread,
and during our week's delay I had an opportunity of seeing the
whole process of making it, and obtaining some interesting
statistics. The sago tree is a palm, thicker and larger than the
cocoa-nut tree, although rarely so tall, and having immense
pinnate spiny leaves, which completely cover the trunk till it is
many years old. It has a creeping root-stem like the Nipa palm,
and when about ten or fifteen years of age sends up an immense
terminal spike of flowers, after which the tree dies. It grows in
swamps, or in swampy hollows on the rocky slopes of hills, where
it seems to thrive equally well as when exposed to the influx of
salt or brackish water. The midribs of the immense leaves form
one of the most useful articles in these lands, supplying the
place of bamboo, to which for many purposes they are superior.
They are twelve or fifteen feet long, and, when very fine, as
thick in the lower part as a man's leg. They are very light,
consisting entirely of a firm pith covered with a hard thin rind
or bark. Entire houses are built of these; they form admirable
roofing-poles for thatch; split and well-supported, they do for
flooring; and when chosen of equal size, and pegged together side
by side to fill up the panels of framed wooden horses, they have
a very neat appearance, and make better walls and partitions than
boards, as they do not shrink, require no paint or varnish, and
are not a quarter the expense. When carefully split and shaved
smooth they are formed into light boards with pegs of the bark
itself, and are the foundation of the leaf-covered boxes of
Goram. All the insect-boxes I used in the Moluccas were thus made
at Amboyna, and when covered with stout paper inside and out, are
strong, light, and secure the insect-pins remarkably well. The
leaflet of the sago folded and tied side by side on the smaller