THE TEAK-TBEE. 



2G7 



Maiid, hut for bread they use rice and a 1>ark wliicli 

 tliey call sagu^ from wliicli also they extract oil in 

 like manner as they do from palms.'* 



As maiae is not difficult to be transported on 

 account of its bulk or liability to any injury, and 

 formed the chief article of food among most of our 

 red-men, it would be the very provision they would 

 take with them on theii" migrations ; and as the part 

 eaten is the fruit, they would have plenty of seed, 

 and would know fi'om their previous experience pre- 

 cisely how to cultivate it 



One part of the sunmmding forest is a grove of 

 jatiy or teak-trees, Tectmia grmulis^ linn. Those 

 found here are only a foot or fifteen inches in diam- 

 eter and forty feet high, a size they attain in Java in 

 twenty-five or thirty years^ where they do not reach 

 their tull growth in less than a century. The na- 

 tive HBmejati is a word of Javanese origin, signify- 

 ing tme, or genuine, and was probably applied to 

 these trees on account of the well-known durability 

 of the wood they yield. Now, near the end of the 

 diy monsoon, they have lost nearly all their foliage ; 

 for, though it is sometimes asserted that in the trop- 

 ics the leaves fall imperceptibly one by one, that is 

 not tme, in this region, where there are well-defined 

 wet and dry seasons. The teak also thi-ives in a few 

 places on the continent, and is found in the central 

 and eastern provinces of Java, in Madma, Bali, and 

 ♦ particularly iq Sumbawa, where the wood is consid- 

 ered better than that of Java, but it is said to be un- 

 known in Sumatra, Borneo, and in the peninsula of 

 Malacca. It exists m some places in Celebes, but 



