everal miles from
his house, out of our direct route, but if we had time to visit it he
would undertake to guide us safely through the jungle to and from the
tree. We found it standing in solitary grandeur in a low swamp, and
lifting its long pinnated leaves from the extreme top of a trunk full
thirty feet high and twenty-eight inches in diameter. Its general
appearance is not unlike the cocoa-nut palm. Our conductor called the
sago tree _sibla_, but the Malays give it the name of _rumbiga_. They
say that each tree, if kept properly pruned down, will produce at
least five hundred pounds of pith per annum; but it soon degenerates
if suffered to grow to any considerable height. The pith is soaked
in large troughs of running water until it dissolves and afterward
settles, the sand and heavy dirt sinking beneath it, and the fibres
and scum floating on top. After being separated from these impurities
the sago is dried, and then granulated by passing it through
perforated plates till it becomes smooth and polished like so many
pearls, when it is packed in boxes and bags for sale. We did not see
the process that day, of course, but afterward at the large factory on
the river a few miles above the settlement.

One more plantation, a grove of the stately areca-nut or betel trees,
we determined to visit before taking the boat. The smooth road was
bordered everywhere with the beautiful melastoma or Singapore rose, of
perennial foliage and always in bloom, underneath acacias and palms;
and the very earth was carpeted with beauty and fragrance enough to
have formed the bridal-couch of a fairy queen. Over such a highway
three miles were quickly made, and we alighted at the entrance of a
narrow lane that led to the abode of Cassim Mootoo, the Malay owner
and cultivator of the betel-nut plantation. At the outer door a stone
monster of huge proportions and uncouth features kept guard against
the uncanny spirits that are supposed to frequent out-of-the-way lanes
and dreary passages. The planter received us pleasantly, accepted our
apologies for troubling him, and offered to show us over the grounds.
He was far less courtly in manners than the Chinese coffee-cultivator,
to whom we should scarcely have ventured to offer a fee, while out of
the Malay's cunning eyes there gleamed the evident expectation of a
snug bonus of silver rupees, which he received as a matter of course
when we bade him adieu, and having counted them over and jingled