xx] THE WILD SAGO PALM 



Tuan Muda had come up thus far some years before. That 

 evening the young men and girls favoured me with one of 

 their dances, or " main pajat." I found that in the art of Terpsi- 

 chore they had progressed further than the Dyaks, and that in 

 their dances, which are a kind of pantomime, they use masks. I 

 saw some of these being carved out of a soft light wood then and 

 there. I slept badly in Tama Dian's house on account of the 

 dogs, which were, as usual, unbearable. 



These Kayans have splendid boats, hollowed out of single 

 tree -trunks, some of them being between sixty and seventy feet 

 in length and five feet in breadth. But I could not find men to 

 go with me, because of the pamali. The day (September 26) also 

 happened to be a fete day for the Kayans, and, if I had stayed in 

 their house, custom would have obliged me not to leave for eight 

 days. Fortunately the Skapans returned in the afternoon with 

 several Punans, who had consented to accompany me as far as 

 Sibu, and the Kayans having given me one of their big boats 

 I was able to leave towards evening ; but I only descended the 

 river as far as the houses of the Punans. Even next day I did 

 not get fairly started on my journey, for the boat had to be put 

 in order, covered with kadjans, and so forth. 



Moreover, the Punans had no rice, and were obliged to go to 

 the forest to get in a supply of kadjattao sago. Here for the first 

 time I had an opportunity of seeing and collecting specimens of 

 the palm which produces this peculiar kind of sago, which I had 

 so often heard mentioned and only seen from a distance. It is 

 a Eugeissonia, but different from that which I had found on 

 Mount Mattang, turning out to be an undescribed species, which 

 I have since named Eugeissonia utilis (cf. Nuov. Gior. Bot. Ital. 

 iii. p. 26). Some specimens of this palm grew near the Punans' 

 house, because, although it abounds in the forest, it is to a certain 

 extent cultivated on account of its usefulness, being grown and 

 the young plants protected in the vicinity of the houses. It is 

 easily grown from seeds, which fall when perfectly ripe and ger- 

 minate spontaneously. In good soil a tree can be cut in five 

 years, so that growth must be extremely rapid. The trees are 

 cut when in blossom, and before they have borne fruit, and they 

 have then reached a height of as much as fifty feet. The stem 

 is bare for some thirty feet, cylindrical, regularly ringed, and about 

 the size of a man's thigh. It is covered with numerous spiny 

 projections, the result of a transformation of adventitious rootlets. 

 The stem is raised from the ground on many short roots, thus 

 differing from the other species of the genus, which all have long 

 and slender roots, raising the stem much higher from the ground. 

 The fronds are large, forming a regular and ample crown on the 

 top of the stem ; they are much arched, and in their midst rises 



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