Sago

“ The beater continues to break up the pith until there is nothing left but the hollow tree-trunk.
The sago is separated from the fibres in the pith by the aid of water. The natives take two sheaths of the sago-plant and make them into water-troughs. They set them up upon little frames, one sheath a little higher than the other, with one of its narrow ends projecting like a spout over the lower sheath. A kind of net-like bark or skin, obtained from the cocoanut tree, serves as a strainer or sieve, and is stretched across the upper sheath or trough. ”

“ Although belonging to the same genus, Sagus, it is evidently distinct in species from the sago palm of Fiji (Sagus vitiensis) , which, according to Mr. Home, grows on the low-lying swampy land, and attains a height of about 35 feet. [52] In the Solomon Islands, the height of full-grown sago palms varies between 60 and 70 feet; whilst the situations in which they are usually found, lie on the hill-slopes and in the drier districts of the islands. In the islands of Fauro and Treasury groves of sago palms occur both on the lower slopes and in the higher districts. ”

“ The shell of each species is very thin, and the yield of sago very abundant, as it comprises all the pith of the tree. Sago trees grow throughout the Malayan archipelago and Philippines as far as Mindanao. ”

“ The people of Muka live in that abject state of poverty that is almost always found where the sago-tree is abundant. Very few of them take the trouble to plant any vegetables or fruit, but live almost entirely on sago and fish, selling a little tripang or tortoiseshell to buy the scanty clothing they require. Almost all of them, however, possess one or more Papuan slaves, on whose labour they live in almost absolute idleness, just going out on little fishing or trading excursions, as an excitement in their monotonous existence. ”

“ A man stands over it, and with an instrument, something between a hatchet and a hoe, extracts all the pith of the tree, which is the sago. This he pitches on to a mat suspended between four poles over the river, and, having poured water over it, he and any members of his family who may happen to be available proceed to run round and jump and dance upon the whole mass, singing and smoking all the time. ”

“ The last-mentioned palm also furnishes a large supply of sugar. Sago as well as sugar, and a kind of palm wine, are procured from Caryota urens.
In China sago is obtained from Rhapis flabelliformis, a dwarfish palm; and some sago is made from it for native use in Travancore, Mysore, and Wynaad, and the jungles in the East Indies.
The trunk of the sago palm is five or six feet round, and it grows to the height of about 20 feet. It can only be propagated by seed. It flourishes best in bogs and swampy marshes; a good plantation being often a bog, knee deep. ”

“ A mature tree produces a large vertical spike of flowers and then dies. When they wish to collect sago, the natives cut down a full-grown palm and clear it of its leaves and leaf-sheaths. A wide strip of the bark is then cut off from the side of the tree which lies uppermost and the sago is exposed. The bark of the tree is really nothing more than a shell about an inch in thickness, enclosing the pith or sago, which is a brownish pulpy substance separated by fibrous strands. ”

“ They cultivate sago on a large scale, and since the exit of their old Bruni rulers—or rather oppressors—are able to enjoy the fruits of their labour, and have increased their plantations considerably. At Bruit, Matu, Oya, Muka, [25] and Bintulu, there are jungles of sago palms, and these places supply by far the largest proportion of the world's consumption of sago. The people being industrious and thrifty are well off. The above-named places are now large towns, and Muka is as large as Bruni. The Melanaus are skilled in working iron, are good carpenters, and excellent boat builders. ”

“ When the house is built over the water, it is commonly connected with the shore by a bridge; but in some places no such bridge exists, and at high water the inmates can only communicate with the shore by means of their canoes. The staple food of the people is sago, which they extract from the sago-palm ”

“ Sagu, sago. The esculent or granulated pith of some palms. On Sumatra it is made from the Sumbiya palm, which is probably our Kirai. The Sunda people make it from both the Kirai and Kawung palms, but only for food when paddy fails them. Clough gives Sagu for sago, and calls it Portuguese in his 2 vol. voce Sago, but does not repeat the word in the Singhalese and English volume, where we, however, find Saguna, C. 694, from Saha, with, Guna, a part, twofold, double ”

“ Less than a mile from Diumana to the right of the track is a beautiful group of palms. Sago, areca and cocoanut all tower above the surrounding vegetation. In the order given they might be taken to typify dignity, slender grace, and real utility. Looking at the sago palm one wonders how men can approach it near enough to cut it down, so formidable [98] are the thorns that cover its lower fronds. ”

“ When her husband tasted the cooked sago, he could do nothing but praise Edae and condemn himself.
This journey to the West for sago has been continued ever since, and at present great are the preparations. Long before daylight may be heard women making their pottery, and a walk through the village is indeed interesting. Some women are just returning from the clay pits with heavy burdens of clay of various kinds, black, red, yellow, brown. Some are spreading the clay out to dry, others are pounding with a stone the dry clay, some are damping and kneading it, and mixing it with very fine sand. ”

“ Still, in the light of the trader's blunt philosophy, and of his own assurance that he was no fool, Shefford felt it incumbent upon him to accept a belief that there were situations no man could resist without an anchor. The ingenuity of man could not have devised a stranger, a more enticing, a more overpoweringly fatal situation. Fatal in that it could not be left untried! Shefford gave in and clicked his teeth as he let himself go. And suddenly he thought of her whom these bitter women called the Sago Lily. ”

“ Sago is the produce of a palm, which in the East yields the food of thousands; it is the pithy centre of the stem, requiring scarcely any preparation to fit it for food, and a single tree sometimes yields 600lb. weight. Those which furnish the so-called cane for chair bottoms are a species of calamus; they hang on trees by long hooked spines, and are sometimes 600ft. ”

“ The fish are carefully smoked, and are bartered for the fine taro and enormous sweet potatoes grown by the Mekeo women.
According to the seasons, with their prevailing winds, these adventurous and trafficking mariners visit the coastal tribes to the north-west or to the south-east. In the Papuan spring, [261] October and November, they repair to Toaripi for sago, which grows in inexhaustible quantity in the neighbourhood of the great rivers. Here they exchange the thin pots of Ziria, the main village of Rabao (or Yule Island) , which are celebrated all along the coast, for bundles of sago. ”

“ Crawfurd says there are four varieties of this palm; the cultivated, the wild, one distinguished by long spines on the branches, and a fourth destitute of these spines, and called by the natives female sago. This and the cultivated species afford the best farina; the spiny variety, which has a slender trunk, and the wild tree, yield but an inferior quality of sago. The farinaceous matter afforded by each plant is very considerable, 500 lbs. being a frequent quantity, while 300 lbs. may be taken as the common average produce of each tree. ”

“ Blyth now told Ned to inform the natives, through Kalong, that we should be ready to purchase all the sago they could obtain, as well as a small quantity of cocoa-nuts, yams, and other roots or fruits, promising to call for them before we left the coast. The natives, who seemed fully to enter into the spirit of trade, were highly satisfied, and undertook to do as they were advised. ”

“ The trunk, however, is the more valuable part, as the pith of the interior is the staple food of large numbers of the inhabitants of these regions. I will not stop here to describe how the sago is made; but I will do so shortly.
We again set to work with our bamboo spades, and dug away most energetically. Some moisture on the ground encouraged us to proceed, while the burning thirst from which we were suffering increased our anxiety for success. As we dug lower the ground became soft, and more and more moist, when Macco, putting down his hand, brought it up full of liquid mud. ”

“ The human effigies “look after” sago in the same way as the bull-roarers “look after” yams, sweet potatoes, and bananas. According to some notes made by Ray, the orara is shown to the initiates during the north-west [106] monsoon, at the time when the sago is planted; but the madubu is swung and shown to the initiates when yams are planted in the south-east monsoon.
When food is scarce or of bad quality, if, for instance, a sago palm is split and found to be “no good,” the natives make moguru and put “medicine along moguru for kaikai” that is, perform moguru magic for food. ”

“ You have not been in the country long enough to appreciate this rare luxury. But when you have become initiated into a knowledge of its surpassing excellences, never an orange, pineapple or other fruit will you touch when a durian can be had."
Just as we were re-entering our palanquins, Chek Kongtwau inquired whether we had yet seen the anoo palm or sago tree, of which he said there was but a solitary specimen in the island, most of the sago manufactured at Singapore being brought in its crude state from the swamps of Sumatra. ”

“ Edae was full of delight, and on seeing his wife broke forth in song. Receiving some sago the wife returned, and set to cooking for her lord when he should land. Great was her joy on landing, and rehearsing all she heard and reporting what she saw. Sago in quantities far beyond her power to describe, and all the men looking well. Soon the lakatoi anchored, and after the visiting was got over, Edae landed amidst the plaudits of the assembled villagers, another Columbus returning from an unknown region. ”

“ The principal export product is sago, of which large quantities are brought down from the Limbang and other rivers in the interior. There are two large sago-washing establishments in the town, both the property of intelligent and hospitable Chinamen. Gutta-percha, caoutchouc, edible birds’-nests, camphor, rattans, and fine timber are also obtained in small quantities from the forests of the country behind. Fine fish is obtained from the river by the natives, and fruit is very plentiful in season. ”

“ One of the principal obstacles in the way of successful exploration in Dutch New Guinea is the lack of food in the country itself. It is true that in the low-lying swampy districts near the coast there are plenty of Sago-palms, but the majority of Malays are not sago eaters except under compulsion, and the preparation of sago to make it only tolerably palatable is a tedious business. Moreover the first object of an expedition to the mountains is to leave the swamps behind as soon as possible. ”

“ The sago palm (Metroxylon Sagus) is one of the smallest of its tribe, seldom reaching to more than 30 feet in height, and grows only in a region extending west to Celebes and Borneo, north to Mindanao, south to Timor, and east to Papua. ”

“ Another Palm—the Sagus, or, Cycus revolute,—which grows naturally in Japan and the East Indian Islands, being also cultivated in English hot-houses, yields by its gummy pith our highly nutritious sago. This when cooked is one of the best and most sustaining foods for children and infirm old persons. The Indians reserve their finest sago for the aged and afflicted. A fecula is washed from the abundant pith, which is chemically a starch, very demulcent, and more digestible than that of rice. It never ferments in the stomach, and is very suitable for hectic persons. ”

“ Near the Mission boat-house we saw a few natives engaged in extracting the sago from the trunk of the Rabia palm. The process, which is very primitive, consists in cutting into shreds the fibrous pith of the palm, cut into lengths of about six feet by means of a peculiar kind of adze, made of hard cane, attached to a handle at an angle of 45°, the light brown substance containing the farina being carried away by women to the edge of the creek, and there deposited in a primitive gutter made out of the butt end of an immense palm leaf. ”

“ Fighting also took up a considerable portion of their time, for added to their desire for loot and slaves was a demand for victims imposed by the warrior deity. The women cultivated little patches of corn, camotes, and some cocoanuts, and at certain seasons all the members of the tribe went to the forest to gather sago, but aside from this the sea furnished most of their food supply. ”

“ Its smooth grey stem rising often 100 feet, forms groups that, in the northern part of Brazil, resemble the pallisades of some gigantic fortress. The produce of these lofty cylinders is very great, not merely of sago, which is procured only when the process of flowering is about to occur, but many trees being cut down before this event, a juice is obtained from them, which forms, by fermentation, a sweet wine ”

“ Before putting in the sago to be dried, a cloth, which contains a small quantity of hog's-lard, or some oily substance, is hastily passed into the qually, and the sago is equally quickly put into it, and a Chinese laborer who attends it, commences stirring it with a pallit, and thus continues his labor during the few minutes necessary to expel the moisture contained in the substance. Thus each qually, containing about ten pounds of sago, requires the attendance of a man. ”

“ Wallace, one fair-sized sago palm will supply one man with food for a year, so it will be seen that the amount of labour required to feed a community in a district where sago is plentiful is not very overwhelming. ”