Mindanao, Next To Luzon, Is The Largest Of The Philippines,
Being Sixty Leagues Long By Forty Or Fifty Leagues Broad.
Its southern
end is in lat.
5 deg. 30' N. the N.W. extremity reaching to 9 deg. 40' N. The
soil is generally fertile, and its stony hills produce many kinds of
trees, most of which are unknown to Europeans. The vallies are supplied
with brooks and rivulets, and stored with various sorts of ever-green
trees, and with rice, water-melons, plantains, bananas, guavas, nutmegs,
cloves, betel-nuts, durians, jacks, or jackas, cocoa-nuts, oranges,
&c.; but, above all, by a species of tree called libby by the natives,
which produces sago, and grows in groves several miles in length. The
poorer people feed on sago instead of bread for several months of the
year. This tree resembles the cabbage-tree, having a strong bark and
hard wood, the heart of which is full of a white pith, like that of the
elder. They cut down the tree and split it open, taking out the pith,
which they stamp or beat well in a mortar, after which, putting it into
a cloth, and pouring in water, they stir it well, till the water carries
all the farinaceous substance through the cloth into a trough. After the
farinaceous matter has settled to the bottom, the water is poured off,
and the sago is baked into cakes, which they use as bread. The sago,
which is carried from hence to other parts of the East Indies, is dried
into small grains, and is used with milk of almonds as a remedy against
fluxes, being of an astringent quality.
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