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.