Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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 houses, 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 in-
side and out, are strong, light, and secure the insect-pins remarkably well. The leaflets of the
sago folded and tied side by side on the smaller midribs form the 'atap' or thatch in univer-
sal use, while the product of the trunk is the staple food of some hundred thousands of men.
Sago club
When sago is to be made, a full-grown tree is selected just before it is going to flower. It
is cut down close to the ground, the leaves and leaf-stalks cleared away, and a broad strip of
the bark taken off the upper side of the trunk. This exposes the pithy matter, which is of a
rusty colour near the bottom of the tree, but higher up pure white, about as hard as a dry
apple, but with woody fibres running through it about a quarter of an inch apart. This pith is
cut or broken down into a coarse powder by means of a tool constructed for the purpose—a
club of hard and heavy wood, having a piece of sharp quartz rock firmly imbedded into its
blunt end, and projecting about half an inch. By successive blows of this, narrow strips of
the pith are cut away, and fall down into the cylinder formed by the bark. Proceeding stead-
ily on, the whole trunk is cleared out, leaving a skin not more than half an inch in thickness.
This material is carried away (in baskets made of the sheathing bases of the leaves) to the
