Leaving Kilwaru early in the morning of June 1st, with a strong east wind we
doubled the point of Ceram about noon, the heavy sea causing my prau to roll
abort a good deal, to the damage of our crockery. As bad weather seemed
coming on, we got inside the reefs and anchored opposite the village of Warns-
warns to wait for a change.
The night was very squally, and though in a good harbour we rolled and
jerked uneasily; but in the morning I had greater cause for uneasiness in the
discovery that our entire Goram crew had decamped, taking with them all they
possessed and a little more, and leaving us without any small boat in which to
land. I immediately told my Amboyna men to load and fire the muskets as a
signal of distress, which was soon answered by the village chief sending off a
boat, which took me on shore. I requested that messengers should be
immediately sent to the neighbouring villages in quest of the fugitives, which
was promptly done. My prau was brought into a small creek, where it could
securely rest in the mud at low water, and part of a house was given me in which
T could stay for a while. I now found my progress again suddenly checked, just
when I thought I had overcome my chief difficulties. As I had treated my men
with the greatest kindness, and had given them almost everything they had asked
for, I can impute their running away only to their being totally unaccustomed to
the restraint of a European master, and to some undefined dread of my ultimate
intentions regarding them. The oldest man was an opium smoker, and a reputed
thief, but I had been obliged to take him at the last moment as a substitute for
another. I feel sure it was he who induced the others to run away, and as they
knew the country well, and had several hours' start of us, there was little chance
of catching them.
We were here in the great sago district of East Ceram which supplies most of
the surrounding islands with their daily bread, and during our week's delay I had
an opportunity of seeing the whole process of making it, and obtaining some
interesting statistics. The sago tree is a palm, thicker and larger than the cocoa-
nut tree, although rarely so tall, and having immense pinnate spiny leaves, which
completely cover the trunk till it is many years old. It has a creeping root-stem
like the Nipa palm, and when about ten or fifteen years of age sends up an
immense terminal spike of flowers, after which the tree dies. It grows in
swamps, or in swampy hollows on the rocky slopes of hills, where it seems to
thrive equally well as when exposed to the influx of salt or brackish water. The
midribs of the immense leaves form one of the most useful articles in these
lands, supplying the place of bamboo, to which for many purposes they are
superior. They are twelve or fifteen feet long, and, when very fine, as thick in the