CHAP. XXV.] SAGO BREAD. 121 



wliicli 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, reckon- 

 ing 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 



