BRITISH BORNEO. 57 
tasteless paste, called doyat and eaten by being twisted into 
a large ball round a stick and inserted into the mouth—an 
ungraceful operation. Tamarind, or some very acid sauce is 
used to impart to it some flavour. Sago is of course cheaper 
than rice, but the latter is, as a rule, much preferred by the 
native, and is found more nutritious and /asting. LOGAN, in 
the ‘Fournal of the Indian Archipelago, calculates that three 
sago palms yield more nutritive matter than an acre of wheat, 
and six trees more than an acre of potatoes. The plantain and 
banana also flourish, under cultivation, in Borneo, and Mr. 
BURBIDGE, in his preface to the Gardens of the Sun, points 
out that it fruits all the year round and that its produce is to 
that of wheat as 133:1, and to that of the potato as 44:1. 
What a Paradise! some of my readers will exclaim. There 
can be no want here! Iam sure the figures and calculations 
above quoted are absolutely correct, but I have certainly seen 
want and poverty in Borneo, and these tropical countries are 
not quite the earthly paradises which some old writers would 
have us believe. For our poor British “unemployed,” at any 
rate, | fear Borneo can never be a refuge, as the sun would 
there be more fatal than the deadly cold here, and the race 
could not be kept up without visits to colder climates. But 
if sago and bananas are so plentiful and so nourishing, as we 
are taught by the experts, it does seem somewhat remarkable, 
in this age of invention, that some means cannot be devised 
of bringing together the prolific food stores of the East and 
the starving thousands of the West. 
Both before, during and after the day’s work, the Malays, 
man and woman, boy and girl, solace and refresh themselves 
with tobacco and with the areca-nut, or the Jefe/ nut as, for 
some unexplained reason, it is called in English books, though 
betel is the name of the pepper leaf in which the areca-nut 
is wrapped and with which it is masticated. 
A good deal of the tobacco now used in Brunai is imported 
from Java or Palembang (Sumatra), but a considerable portion 
is grown in the hilly districts on the West Coast of North 
Borneo, in the vicinity of Gaya Bay, by the Muruts. It is 
unfermented and sun-dried, but has not at all a bad flavour 
