544 



The National Geographic Magazine 



A CASSOWARY AT SORONG, NEW GUINEA 



The young birds are driven into nets stretched in the woods ; then they are kept tame 

 near the village until a feast time. They provide food, feather ornaments, hair combs, bone 

 daggers, and arrow-points of bone splinters and toe nails. 



is used, the head of which is made from 

 the same stone as are the stone adzes, 

 only instead of being axe-like in shape 

 they are round, with a hollow in the 

 front face, leaving a rather sharp rim. 



After the pulp is well beaten, water is 

 run into the now well-hollowed trunk. 

 This water is generally obtained by using 

 other old tree trunks as leaders and turn- 

 ing in a small brook. The flow after 

 passing the pulp, which is agitated by 

 hand, is generally run into a large canoe. 

 Here the starchy matter settles, and when 

 the water is drawn off this is packed 

 into a receptacle of woven palm leaves. 

 The whole affair hardens and will keep 

 thus, while dry, almost indefinitely. 



Wallace gives an illuminating account 

 of how easily a deal of this food may be 

 obtained. He says : "It is truly an ex- 

 traordinary sight to witness a whole tree 

 trunk, perhaps twenty feet long and four 

 or five feet in circumference, converted 



into food with so little labor and prepa- 

 ration. 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, reckoning 

 a tree to produce 1,800 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 well and can be baked as wanted, so 

 that we may estimate that in ten days a 

 man may produce food for the whole 

 year." 



These people do not by any means live 

 on sago alone. Fish, flesh of pigs, kanga- 

 roo, opossums, and of cassowary and 

 other birds vary the monotony. The fish 



