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 leafstalks 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 fibre 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
steadily 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 nearest water, where a washing-machine is put up, which is
composed almost entirely of the saga tree itself. The large
sheathing bases of the leaves form the troughs, and the fibrous
covering from the leaf-stalks of the young cocoa-nut the
strainer. Water is poured on the mass of pith, which is kneaded
and pressed against the strainer till the starch is all dissolved
and has passed through, when the fibrous refuse is thrown away,
and a fresh basketful put in its place. The water charged with
sago starch passes on to a trough, with a depression in the
centre, where the sediment is deposited, the surplus water
trickling off by a shallow outlet. When the trough is nearly
full, the mass of starch, which has a slight reddish tinge, is
made into cylinders of about thirty pounds' weight, and neatly
covered with sago leaves, and in this state is sold as raw sago.
Boiled with water this forms a thick glutinous mass, with a
rather astringent taste, and is eaten with salt, limes, and
chilies. Sago-bread is made in large quantities, by baking it
into cakes in a small clay oven containing six or eight slits
side by side, each about three-quarters 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
leave 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 substitute
for bread with my coffee. Soaked and boiled they make a very good
pudding or vegetable, and served well to economize our rice,
which is sometimes difficult to get so far east.
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. A
good-sized tree will produce thirty tomans or bundles of thirty
pounds each, and each toman 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 prejudicial, for
the inhabitants of the sago countries are never so well off as
those where rice is cultivated. 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 trading 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 barbarous tribes of the Archipelago.
The country round Warus-warus is low and swampy, and owing to the
absence of cultivation 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.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 29 of 109
Words from 28557 to 29572
of 111511
