300 
SAGO. 
are said to be about 350 souls, and tliat the produce might 
be put down at 3,003 piculs a year. Most of these people 
are dependants of Siak and Campar, the chiefs of the former 
place practising a system of extortion and rapine enough to 
induce any other class of people less accustomed to it, to-desert 
the place.* The cultivators in the other places are Malays 
and much superior, though their exports are severally less, and 
trafficking with them is not so dangerous or uncertain. 
Appong has 350 souls employed and could produce 3,000 
piculs. 1 his would afford under all the disadvantages at which 
they sell it, Sp, dolars 1,024 per annum, a sum quite adequate 
to the demands for foreign luxuries of people who do not eat 
rice, and live upon the produce of their woods. The people 
of Siak were the chief importers of sago into Malacca, whence 
erroneously it got the name of >iak sago —described as the 
best Crawturd Siak itself exports no sago. 
Malays all agree that the cultivation of sago is the most 
profitable of agricultural pursuits, not yielding even to the 
cultivation of rice by Sawas, for once in bearing the trees 
are ad infinitum equally profitable and require little or no 
labor. 
The miserable state of barbarism in which the cultivators of 
sago exist, puts all calculation at defiance, hut we do not 
hesitate in saying that if any person would commence here, 
and there are many places peculiarly favorable to it and of 
considerable extent, the profits of an English acre when the 
trees were once fit to cut would amount on a low estimate to 
50 pounds sterling per annum after paying all expenses. 
This too is a branch of agriculture that an European might 
engage in without the certainly of being robbed, which per¬ 
tains to the culture of spices &c 
The maritime Malays, who are almost the sole importers 
of sago, are enabled generally to realize from 80 to 120 per 
cent on their cargoes: they are seldom ten days at sea, and 
notwithstanding the occasional detentions and annoyances 
they experience in carrying on this traffic, must, with few ex¬ 
ceptions, be, well recompensed. 
Allowing an absence of two months, in a boat of two coy- 
ans, and five men, bringing back four hundred tampin, they 
have a dear gain on their return cargo of 17 to 26 dollars 
according to the stat of the market, giving each person a 
profit as wages, when sago is in demand, of two and a half 
Spanish Dollars per month, and putting aside 50 cents for 
* We lately found two families on Battara ; they had managed to make their 
escape,—J. R. L. 
