18 



THE WORLD S WONDERS. 



is deposited, the surplus water trickling off by a shallow outlet. 

 The sago thus gathered is taken out of the trough and dried into 

 cylinders of about thirty pounds weight. It makes excellent 

 bread and delicious cakes, particularly when eaten with butter 

 and a little sugar. 



It is truly an extraordinary sight to witness a whole tree-trunk, 

 perhaps twenty feet long and four or five in circumference, con- 

 verted into food with so little labor and preparation. A good- 



THE STRUGGLE WITH THE PYTHON. 



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 1800 cakes, weighing 600 pounds, it will supply 

 a man with food for a whole year. The labor 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, ancj can be baked as wanted, so 



