The
Oldest Man Was An Opium Smoker, And A Reputed Thief, But I Had
Been Obliged To Take Him At The Last Moment As A Substitute For
Another.
I feel sure it was he who induced the others to run
away, and as they knew the country well, and had several hours'
start of us, there was little chance of catching them.
We were here in the great sago district of East Ceram which
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.
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