Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
A good-sized tree will produce thirty tomans or bundles of thirty pounds each, and each to-
man will make sixty cakes of three to the pound. Two of these cakes are as much as a man
can eat at one meal, and five are considered a full day's allowance; so that, reckoning a tree
to produce 1,800 cakes, weighing 600 pounds, it will supply a man with food for a whole
year. The labour to produce this is very moderate. Two men will finish a tree in five days,
and two women will bake the whole into cakes in five days more; but the raw sago will keep
very well, and can be baked as wanted, so that we may estimate that in ten days a man may
produce food for the whole year. This is on the supposition that he possesses sago trees of
his own, for they are now all private property. If he does not, he has to pay about seven and
sixpence for one; and as labour here is five pence a day, the total cost of a year's food for
one man is about twelve shillings. The effect of this cheapness of food is decidedly prejudi-
cial, for the inhabitants of the sago countries are never so well off as those where rice is cul-
tivated. Many of the people here have neither vegetables nor fruit, but live almost entirely
on sago and a little fish. Having few occupations at home, they wander about on petty trad-
ing or fishing expeditions to the neighbouring islands; and as far as the comforts of life are
concerned, are much inferior to the wild hill-Dyaks of Borneo, or to many of the more bar-
barous tribes of the Archipelago.
The country round Warus-warus is low and swampy, and owing to the absence of cultiva-
tion there were scarcely any paths leading into the forest. I was therefore unable to collect
much during my enforced stay, and found no rare birds or insects to improve my opinion of
Ceram as a collecting ground. Finding it quite impossible to get men here to accompany me
on the whole voyage, I was obliged to be content with a crew to take me as far as Wahai, on
the middle of the north coast of Ceram, and the chief Dutch station in the island. The jour-
ney took us five days, owing to calms and light winds, and no incident of any interest oc-
curred on it, nor did I obtain at our stopping places a single addition to my collections worth
naming. At Wahai, which I reached on the 15th of June, I was hospitably received by the
Commandant and my old friend Herr Rosenberg, who was now on an official visit here. He
lent me some money to pay my men, and I was lucky enough to obtain three others willing
to make the voyage with me to Ternate, and one more who was to return from Mysol. One
of my Amboyna lads, however, left me, so that I was still rather short of hands.
I found here a letter from Charles Allen, who was at Silinta in Mysol, anxiously expecting
me, as he was out of rice and other necessaries, and was short of insect-pins. He was also ill,
and if I did not soon come would return to Wahai.
As my voyage from this place to Waigiou was among islands inhabited by the Papuan
race, and was an eventful and disastrous one, I will narrate its chief incidents in a separate
