rice, which is sometimes difficult to get so far
east.

It is truly an extraordinary sight to witness a whole tree-trunk,
perhaps twenty feet long and four or five in circumference, converted
into food with so little labour and preparation. A good-sized tree will
produce thirty tomans or bundles of thirty pounds each, and each toman
will make sixty cakes of three to the pound. Two of these cakes are as
much as a man can eat at one meal, and five are considered a full day's
allowance; so that, reckoning a tree to produce 1,800 cakes, weighing
600 pounds, it will supply a man with food for a whole year. The labour
to produce this is very moderate. Two men will finish a tree in five
days, and two women will bake the whole into cakes in five days more;
but the raw sago will keep very well, and can be baked as wanted, so
that we may estimate that in ten days a man may produce food for the
whole year. This is on the supposition that he possesses sago trees of
his own, for they are now all private property. If he does not, he has
to pay about seven and sixpence for one; and as labour here is five
pence a day, the total cost of a year's food for one man is about
twelve shillings. The effect of this cheapness of food is decidedly
prejudicial, for the inhabitants of the sago countries are never so
well off as those where rice is cultivated. Many of the people here have
neither vegetables nor fruit, but live almost entirely on sago and a
little fish. Having few occupations at home, they wander about on petty
trading or fishing expeditions to the neighbouring islands; and as far
as the comforts of life are concerned, are much inferior to the wild
hill-Dyaks of Borneo, or to many of the more barbarous tribes of the
Archipelago.

The country round Warus-warus is low and swampy, and owing to the
absence of cultivation there were scarcely any paths leading into the
forest. I was therefore unable to collect much during my enforced stay,
and found no rare birds or insects to improve my opinion of Ceram as
a collecting ground. Finding it quite impossible to get men here to
accompany me on the whole voyage, I was obliged to be content with a
crew to take me as far as Wahai, on the middle of the north coast of
Ceram, and the chief Dutch station in the island. The journey took
us five days, owing to calms and light winds, and no incident of any
interest occurred on it, nor did I obtain at our stopping places a
single addition to my collec