The Malay archipelago : the land of the orang-utan ... - Wallace Online

292 THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. [chap.trunk, perhaps twenty feet long and four or &ye in circumference,converted into food witli so little labour and preparation.A good-sized tree will pi'oduce thirty tomans or bundles ofthirty pounds each, and each toman will make sixty cakes ofthree to the pound. Two of these cakes are as much as a mancan eat at one meal, and five are considered a full day's allowance; so that, reckoning a tree to produce 1,800 cakes, weighing600 pounds, it will supply a man with food for a whole year.The labour to produce this is very moderate. Two men willfinish a tree in five days, and two women will bake the wholeinto cakes in five days more ; but the raw sago will keep verywell, and can be baked as wanted, so that we may estimate thatin ten days a man may produce food for the whole year. Thisis on tlie supposition that he possesses sago trees of his own, forthey are now all private property. If he does not, he has to payabout seven and sixpence for one ; and as labour here is fivepencea day, the total cost of a year's food for one man is abouttwelve shillings. The effect of tliis cheapness of food is decidedlyprejudicial, for the inhabitants of the sago countries are neverso well off" as those where rice is cultivated. Many of the peoplehere have neither vegetables nor fruit, but live almost entirelyon sago and a little fish. Having few occupations at home, theywander about on petty trading or fishing expeditions to theneighbouring islands ; and as far as the comforts of life areconcerned, are much inferior to the wild hill-Dyaks of Borneo,or to many of the more Ijarbarous tribes of the Archipelago.The country round Warus-warus is low and swampy, andowing to the absence of cultivation there were scarcely anypaths leading into the forest. I was therefore unable to collectmuch during my enforced stay, and found no rare birds or insects "to improve my opinion of Ceram as a collecting ground. Findingit quite impossible to get men here to accomiDany me on thewhole voyage, I was obliged to be content with a crew to takeme as far as Wahai, on the middle of the north coast of Cerara,and the chief Dutch station in the island. The journey took usfive days, owing to calms and liglit winds, and no incident ofany interest occurred on it, nor did I obtain at our stoppingplaces a single addition to my collections worth naming. AtWahai, whicli I reached on the 15th of June, I was hospitablyreceived bj' the Commandant and my old friend Herr Rosenberg,who was now on an othcial visit liere. He lent me some moneyto pay my men, and I was lucky enough to obtain three otherswilling to make the voyage with me to Ternate, and one morewho was to return from Mysol. One of my Amboyna lads,nowever, left me, so that I was still rather short of hands.I found here a letter from Charles Allen, wlio was at Silintain ^lysol, anxiously expecting me, as he was out of rice and othernecessaries, and was short of insect-pins. He was also ill, andif I did not soon come would return to Wahai.As my voyage from this place to Waigiou was among islands