426 THE NIBONG PALM. 



contains, like all other Palms, a soft spike about the hard- 

 ness of the core of the cabbage, which has hence induced 

 seamen and others to christen it the Cabbage-Palm, and 

 the Spaniards "Palma brava." It is certainly a most 

 delicious vegetable, and when boiled resembles Asparagus 

 or Kale; uncooked in its raw state, it furnishes fictitious 

 cucumber and an excellent salad. The tree contains an 

 immense quantity of useless pithy matter or newly-formed 

 wood of the interior, and it is therefore split into four or 

 more parts, and the soft parts cut away leaving only the 

 outer rind of older wood, which is of so flinty a nature as 

 to turn the edge of well-tempered tools. These narrow 

 slightly-curved slabs form the principal flooring of all 

 Malay houses. In England this hard, brittle, and beautiful 

 wood is frequently used for the sticks of umbrellas ; and 

 it is capable of being manufactured into very elegant 

 frames for pictures, or for any matters not requiring a 

 greater breadth than twenty-two inches by half an inch, 

 or three-quarters of an inch in thickness. The bows as 

 well as arrows of the Natives of New Guinea are generally 

 formed from this wood. 



At Gunung Taboor, I first saw that singular commodity 

 collected by the Dyaks called vegetable-tallow, which is 

 an object of some commercial importance among the 

 Natives of the Indian Archipelago. It is a concrete oil 

 obtained from the expressed boiled fruit of a species of 

 Bassia, a Sapotaceous plant, either the B. longifolia of 

 Linnaeus or the B. butyracea of Roxburgh, and belong- 

 ing to the same genus as the Butter-tree described by 

 Mungo Park. It was brought to us in large round 

 flattened cakes of the consistence and colour of cheese, 



