sfactory, and I was anxious to reach him as soon as
possible.

Leaving Kilwaru early in the morning of June 1st, with a strong east
wind we doubled the point of Ceram about noon, the heavy sea causing my
prau to roll abort a good deal, to the damage of our crockery. As bad
weather seemed coming on, we got inside the reefs and anchored opposite
the village of Warns-warns to wait for a change.

The night was very squally, and though in a good harbour we rolled and
jerked uneasily; but in the morning I had greater cause for uneasiness
in the discovery that our entire Goram crew had decamped, taking with
them all they possessed and a little more, and leaving us without any
small boat in which to land. I immediately told my Amboyna men to load
and fire the muskets as a signal of distress, which was soon answered
by the village chief sending off a boat, which took me on shore. I
requested that messengers should be immediately sent to the neighbouring
villages in quest of the fugitives, which was promptly done. My prau was
brought into a small creek, where it could securely rest in the mud at
low water, and part of a house was given me in which T could stay for
a while. I now found my progress again suddenly checked, just when I
thought I had overcome my chief difficulties. As I had treated my men
with the greatest kindness, and had given them almost everything they
had asked for, I can impute their running away only to their being
totally unaccustomed to the restraint of a European master, and to some
undefined dread of my ultimate intentions regarding them. The oldest man
was an opium smoker, and a reputed thief, but I had been obliged to take
him at the last moment as a substitute for another. I feel sure it was
he who induced the others to run away, and as they knew the country
well, and had several hours' start of us, there was little chance of
catching them.

We were here in the great sago district of East Ceram which supplies
most of the surrounding islands with their daily bread, and during our
week's delay I had an opportunity of seeing the whole process of making
it, and obtaining some interesting statistics. The sago tree is a palm,
thicker and larger than the cocoa-nut tree, although rarely so tall, and
having immense pinnate spiny leaves, which completely cover the trunk
till it is many years old. It has a creeping root-stem like the Nipa
palm, and when about ten or fifteen years of age sends up an immense
term