Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ters of an inch wide, and six or eight inches square. The raw sago is broken up, dried in the
sun, powdered, and finely sifted. The oven is heated over a clear fire of embers, and is
lightly filled with the sago-powder. The openings are then covered with a flat piece of sago
bark, and in about five minutes the cakes are turned out sufficiently baked. The hot cakes
are very nice with butter, and when made with the addition of a little sugar and grated
cocoa-nut are quite a delicacy. They are soft, and something like corn-flour cakes, but have
a slight characteristic flavour which is lost in the refined sago we use in this country. When
not wanted for immediate use, they are dried for several days in the sun, and tied up in
bundles of twenty. They will then keep for years; they are very hard, and very rough and
dry, but the people are used to them from infancy, and little children may be seen gnawing at
them as contentedly as ours with their bread-and-butter. If dipped in water and then toasted,
they become almost as good as when fresh baked; and thus treated they were my daily sub-
stitute for bread with my coffee. Soaked and boiled they make a very good pudding or ve-
getable, and served well to economize our rice, which is sometimes difficult to get so far
east.
Sago oven
It is truly an extraordinary sight to witness a whole tree-trunk, perhaps twenty feet long
and four or five in circumference, converted into food with so little labour and preparation.
