382 Ceram. 



villages in quest of the fugitives, which was promptly done. 

 My prau was brought into a small creek, where it could se- 

 curely rest in the mud at low water, and part of a house was 

 oriven me, in which I could stay for a while. I now found 

 my progress again suddenly checked, just when I thought I 

 had overcome my chief difficulties. As I had treated my men 

 with the greatest kindness, and had given them almost every 

 thing they had asked for, I can impute their running away 

 only to their being totally unaccustomed to the restraint of a 

 European master, and for some undefined dread of my ulti- 

 mate intentions regarding them. The oldest man was an opi- 

 um-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 one week's delay I had an opportunity of 

 seeing the whole process of making it, and obtaining some in- 

 teresting statistics. The sago-tree is a palm, thicker and 

 larger than the cocoa-nut tree, although rarely so tall, and hav- 

 ing 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. 

 They are very light, consisting entirely of a firm pith covered 

 with a hard thin rind or bark. Entire houses are built of 

 these ; they form admirable roofing-poles for thatch ; split 

 and well-supported, they do for flooring ; and when chosen of 

 equal size, and pegged together side by side to fill up the pan- 

 els of framed wooden houses, they have a very neat appear- 

 ance, and make better walls and partitions than boards, as 



