roots, and this succession can be regulated by the knife in any manner the planter
desires. The sago-tree when cut down and the top severed from it is a cylinder
about 20 inches in diameter, and from 15 to 20 feet in height. Assuming 20 inches
as the diameter and 15 feet as the height of the trees, the contents will be nearly
26 bushels, and allowing one half for woody fibre, there will remain 13 bushels of
starch, which agrees very closely with our previous calculation of 700 pounds for
each tree or 12^ bushels. I t may give some idea of the enormous rate of this produce,
if it be considered that three trees yield more nutritive matter than an acre of wheat,
and six trees more than an acre of potatoes. An acre of sago, if cut down at one
harvest will yield 5220 bushels, or as much as 163 acres of wheat, so that according
as we allow 7 or 15 years for the growth of a tree, an acre of sago is equal in
annual produce to 23 or to 10 acres of wheat.” Journal of the Indian Archipelago,
vol. 3. p. 312.
Sago is the sole bread of the inhabitants of the Spice Islands and of New Guinea,
and its neighbouring islands, but of no other part of the Archipelago. In the
Malay countries it is only the food of the wild tribes, and is hardly used by the
Malays themselves. In Mindano it is consumed only by the poorer classes, and in
Java, Bali, and Lomboc, fertile in rice, it is altogether unknown as an article of food.
It is far from being either so palatable or nutritious as it is prolific, and is never preferred,
even where it is most abundant, to rice. I t has the obvious disadvantage of
being the lowest quality of farinaceous food, and living on which it is impossible to
fall back on any other. In this respect it is like the potato or the banana, although
over the first of these it possesses the advantage of the crop being less liable to failure;
if, indeed, liable to it at all. One thing is certain, that no nation of the Archipelago,
of whom it has been the chief vegetable diet, has ever acquired any respectable amount
of civilisation. Those doing so, who had attained the greatest degree of it, were the
inhabitants of the small islands producing spices, and they owed their advancement
to the trade they carried on in these commodities, but even these had neither a
kalendar nor a written language, and received the useful metals and their clothing
from the' nations of the west.
The granulated farina of sago, of a dirty brown colour, used to be exported from
the Archipelago in small quantities, under the old system of monopoly, but about the
time when the trade with Europe was first thrown open in 1814, the Chinese of
Malacca began to prepare a much superior article, known in commerce under the
name of pearl sago. Of this and of sago flower, or the ungranulated starch, Singapore
is, at present, the chief place of manufacture and principal mart, the Chinese being
the sole manufacturers, and the raw material being brought from various neighbouring
countries, but chiefly from the north-western coast of Borneo, and the north-eastern
of Sumatra with its adjacent islands from Siak to Indragiri. In the year 1847-48
the quantity of sago exported from Singapore was about 80,000 cwt., worth on the
spot about 45,0002.
SAKA. This is the name of a celebrated personage of Southern India, and the
same as Salivana, the founder of an era that is called after him, and which the
Hindus introduced into the Archipelago. I t dates 78 years after Christ, and stills
exists in Bali, and nominally in Java, for here, in consequence of the adoption of lunar
time in a.d . 1633, the years no longer correspond. The Javanese, prefixing the
word Aji, signifying in their language king, to the name of Saka, fable this personage
to have arrived with a colony from India in the first year of his own time, and to
have been the introducer into their island of letters and civilisation. This is a good
example of the manner in which the early chronology of this people is fabricated.
SAKAI. This is one of the most frequent names given by the civilised Malays to
the rude tribes unconverted to Mahommedanism inhabiting the interior of the Malay
Peninsula from Perak southward, as well as the opposite coast of Sumatra and its
islands. These are of the same race and apparently of the same nation as the Malays
themselves, for they speak a rude dialect of their language. Generally, they are an
inoffensive and simple people, living by hunting, but occasionally practising the culture
of rice, or the sago palm. The Malays, according to their localities or states of
civilisation, divide them into forest or wild, and tame or docile, expressed in their
language by the words utan and jinak. See Orang-laut.
SALAWATI. The name of an island lying off the western point of New Guinea,
having the island of Balanta to the north-west. I t is computed to have an area of
528 square geographical miles.
SALAYAR 373 SAMAUW"
SALAYAR, The name of a considerable island lying off the end of the south
western peninsula of Celebes. Its length runs from north to south, and is about 40
miles, but its breadth is small, and its whole area, including some neighbouring islets
annexed to it is but 720 geographical square miles. In 1824, the whole population,
including that of dependent islets, was 30,524, so that it is one of the most populous
parts of Celebes. It raises, at present, a sufficiency of food for its own maintenance,
although before a burthen to the Dutch treasury, and this revolution has resulted
from the abolition of monopolies. The teak tree has been introduced into Salayar
from Java, and appears to flourish. The straits which divide it from the mainland
of Celebes are the highway to and from the Spice Islands, and in themes first
experienced the change of seasons, between the western and eastern halves of the
Archipelago, in which the rainy season is reversed, and by which they conform, to the
west with the north-westerly, and in the east with the south-easterly monsoon.
SALIBABO. See Talant.
SALT. The name for culinary salt in Malay is garam, and in Javanese uyak, the
last of these words, with trifling corruptions extending to all the languages of the
countries in the neighbourhood of Java, as Bali, Madura, and the country of the
Lampungs in Sumatra. I know no place in the Malay and Philippine Archipelago,
in which salt is made by the cheap process of solar evaporation, except some parts of
the northern coast of Java, and the province of Pangasinan on the western side of
Luzon; and this, no doubt from the absence of land suited for the formation of salt-pans,
and the want of sufficient heat accompanied by drought for evaporation. From all
we know of the coasts of the other islands, the land is either too elevated or it is
skirted with mangroves, or the shore is so flushed with fresh water, so as to render
them wholly unfit for this process. In Borneo, the ashes of littoral plants are
lixiviated in order to obtain from them an impure muriate of soda, and the same
practice seems to be followed in several of the Philippine Islands. Generally, however,
the islands of both Archipelagos are supplied from Java or Luzon, and to a
large extent from foreign countries producing a cheap bay-salt, especially the Coromandel
coast of India, Siam and Cochin-China. On some parts of the southern
coast of Java an impure salt is obtained, from boiling a concentrated brine, obtained
by mixing with common salt water sea-sand impregnated with salt previously
watered from the sea, as a gardener would water a flower-bed. With the exception
of a small quantity employed in curing fish, all the salt of the islands is used only
as a common condiment. It is everywhere subjected to a custom duty, but it forms
nowhere the subject of an excise tax or a monopoly, except in Java, where it realises
to the Netherland government an annual revenue of about 400,0002.
SALTPETRE. The name for this commodity in Javanese and Malay, indeed,
with some corruptions, in all the languages of the Malay and Philippine Archipelagos,
is sandawa. It is obtained from the decomposed dung of birds and bats in caves. To
what purpose it was applied before the knowledge of gunpowder, is uncertain, but,
probably, to the manufacture of fire-works. I t is the name which the Javanese apply
to gunpowder, and it is entirely a native word.
SAMANG. This is the name which the Malays give to the raee of small negros
found in the mountains of the Malay peninsula. See Negros and N ew Guinea.
SAMAUW or SAMAO, is the name of a small island lying off the western end of
Timur, separated from it by a safe navigable passage, three miles broad, with good
anchorage and shelter in the south-west monsoon, when there is none in the road of
the Dutch settlement of Coupang opposite to it. The island is 20 miles in length and
7 in breadth, with an area of 134 square geographical miles. The interior and southeastern
side consist of a chain of mountains of moderate height,—the rest of the island
of a sandy, bare, and sterile plain, formed of decomposed lime-stone and fossil shells.
The mountains are of lime-stone, and covered with a coat of sulphur and sulphuret
of iron. Here there are two hot springs, strongly impregnated with sulphuret of
iron, and close to them is a remarkable baniau or fig-tree—the Ficus benjamina
which has above 3000 stems, and, of which the spread would afford shelter to a small
army. It is an object of worship by the natives. Samao is the residence of the
3 3 5 5 2 8 Prm<f . of Coupang, and has been so from the year 1616, when the
Dutch, by the expulsion of the Portuguese, took possession of the western part of.
Tjmuv. The inhabitants are the same dark-complexioned, frizzle-haired race as those
of Timur, and amount to 3000.