The Penel Sago of commerce and its Manufacture. 153 



of j^oarl, or white sago, from the raw state, which is brought 

 from the N.E. coast of Smuatra, and the N.W. coast of 

 Borneo. Ahnost the whole of the sago of commerce is 

 prepared here, and all but exclusively by Chinese labour. 

 Sago is chiefly obtained from the pith of several species of 

 palm, but more particularly from the Sagus Rumphii and the 

 Sagiis Laevii., both of which are rather limited in their area 

 of cultivation, and are not, like the cosmopolitan cocoa-nut 

 palm, found in every quarter of the tropical zone, both in the 

 Old and New World, but are indigenous to the Indian Archi- 

 pelago alone. The trunk of the sago-palm, when felled, is 

 a cylinder of about 20 inches in diameter, and from 15 to 

 20 feet in length, which, when the woody fibres have been 

 separated, contains about 700 lbs of clear fine fecula. One 

 may form some conception of its extraordinary productive- 

 ness on learning that three sago-palms contain as much 

 nutritious matter as an acre of land grown with wheat ! 

 One piece of ground of the extent of an English acre planted 

 with sago-palms occasionally yields 313,000 lbs of sago, or 

 as much food as 163 acres of wheat. The sago however is 

 neither as palatable nor as nutritious as it is productive, and 

 nowhere, where rice is in common use, will it be displaced 

 by this article of food. We visited the largest sago manu- 

 facture in Singapore, in which the sago, as it comes in the 

 raw state from Borneo and Smnatra, is washed and roasted, 

 when it becomes the pearl sago of commerce. The quantity 

 thus prepared annually amounts to about 100,000 cwt. 



