straight to the bottom.  It can be split straight from end to end like a cane.  When the flour has been removed the wood remains, as has been said, three inches thick.  Of this the people make short lances, not long ones, because they are so heavy that no one could carry or handle them if long.  One end is sharpened and charred in the fire, and when thus prepared they will pierce any armour, and much better than iron would do.”  Marsden points out that this heavy lance-wood is not that of the true Sago-palm, but of the Nibong or Caryota urens; which does indeed give some amount of sago.

["When sago is to be made, a full-grown tree is selected just before it is going to flower.  It is cut down close to the ground, the leaves and leaf-stalks cleared away, and a broad strip of the bark taken off the upper side of the trunk.  This exposes the pithy matter, which is of a rusty colour near the bottom of the tree, but higher up pure white, about as hard as a dry apple, but with woody fibres running through it about a quarter of an inch apart.  This pith is cut or broken down into a coarse powder, by means of a tool constructed for the purpose....  Water is poured on the mass of pith, which is kneaded and pressed against the strainer till the starch is all dissolved and has passed through, when the fibrous refuse is thrown away, and a fresh basketful put in its place.  The water charged with sago starch passes on to a trough, with a depression in the centre, where the sediment is deposited, the surplus water trickling off by a shallow outlet.  When the trough is nearly full, the mass of starch, which has a slight reddish tinge, is made into cylinders of about thirty pounds’ weight, and neatly covered with sago leaves, and in this state is sold as raw sago.  Boiled with water this forms a thick glutinous mass, with a rather astringent taste, and is eaten with salt, limes, and chilies.  Sago-bread is made in large quantities, by baking it into cakes in a small clay oven containing six or eight slits side by side, each about three-quarters of an inch wide, and six or eight inches square.  The raw sago is broken up, dried in the sun, powdered, and finely sifted.  The oven is heated over a clear fire of embers, and is lightly filled with the sago powder.  The openings are then covered with a flat piece of sago bark, and in about five minutes the cakes are turned out sufficiently baked.  The hot cakes are very nice with butter, and when made with the addition of a little sugar and grated cocoa-nut are quite a delicacy.  They are soft, and something like corn-flour cakes, but have a slight characteristic flavour which is lost in the refined sago we use in this country.  When not wanted for immediate use, they are dried for several days in the sun, and tied up in bundles of twenty.  They will then keep for years; they are very hard, and very rough and dry....” (A.  R. Wallace’s Malay Archipelago, 1869, II. pp. 118-121.) —­H.C.]