84 
WAAI — SACOMA KING. 
made of sawdust. And such they in a sense 
are. Unlike rice or barley, sago is not the fruit 
of a tiny stem, — it is the pith of the trunk of a 
great tree. The tree is felled, the pith — a soft 
fibrous wood— is scraped out, then it is beaten 
fine, and laid in a trough with water to steep. 
The water passes through a sieve into another 
trough, carrying with it the starch in the wood, 
aud this settles at the bottom. The sediment is 
sago in its first stage — a fine powder, which is at 
once packed into cylinder-like cases for export. 
The neighbouring island of Ceram supplies most 
of the surrounding islands with their daily 
bread, and while we were at Paso boats fre- 
quently landed laden with this product. 
In these cylinders the sago forms into a caked 
mass. To bake it, it is broken up and dried, 
when it becomes a fine flour ; this is placed in a 
heated mould with some five or six divisions, 
and from these the baked cakes are turned out. 
When hot they are soft and very sweet ; when 
cold they become hard, and are in this con- 
dition the daily food of the natives. 
Dried in the sun the cakes will keep for years. 
We mean to take a store of them to Timor-laut ; 
indeed our men could ill subsist without them — 
they are accustomed to them all their lives, and 
