des. It is thicker than the cocoanut palm, but it
does not grow quite so tall, being about thirty feet high when full
grown, and perhaps twenty inches in diameter. What looks like the root
of the sago-tree is really a creeping underground stem, from which a
spike of flowers grows up when the tree is about ten or fifteen years
old. For some years, while the plant is young, the upright growing stem
is covered and completely hidden by very large spiny leaves. These are
rather like enormous feathers, of which the centre stems, or midribs,
corresponding to the quill of the feather, are from twelve to fifteen
feet long, and, in their widest part, as thick as a man's leg. They are
used like bamboo by the natives, for building houses, and also for
making the roofs and floors of houses that are built of other kinds of
wood.

The bases of the midribs widen out and wrap round the stem like a kind
of sheath, as almost all leaf-stalks do to some extent. But the sheaths
of the sago-tree are so large that, when they are broken off and
trimmed, they are like large baskets or troughs--wide in the middle,
where they have grasped the stem, and narrow at the ends, where they
have joined the tree or are rolled up to form the midrib of the leaf. It
is interesting to remember this, because the natives actually use the
sheaths as baskets and troughs.

The hollow stem of the growing sago-tree is not more than half an inch
in thickness, and it is filled with a light, pithy matter, from which
'sago' is made. This pithy matter varies in colour from a rusty tinge to
white, and is rather like the eatable part of a dry apple. Strings of
harder, woody fibre run through it like straight veins, and these are of
no use for making sago. The pith is best for use when the tree is full
grown and just about to flower, and it is then that the natives cut it
down.

The tree is cut close to the ground, and, as it lies on the soil, its
leaves are cut off, and a portion of the bark is shaved away from the
upper side of the trunk so as to lay the pith bare. A native takes a
club with a sharp stone in the end of it and beats the sago-pith with
it. By this means he breaks up the fibres and the pith into little
chips, taking care that they are kept within the trunk. From time to
time these chips are loaded into one of the sheaths of the midribs, and
carried away to be cleaned. The beater continues to break up the pith
until there is nothing left but the hollow tree