A METHOD OF PREPARING AND MAKING SAGO, VERMICELLI, AND SOY, FROM THE PLANTS GROWING IN AMERICA
Year: 1767

page_text: TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, SAMUEL
BOWEN, of the Province of Georgia, in America, Merchant, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third, by His
Letters Patent, under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing late the First
day of July, in the seventh year of His reign, did give and grant unto me, the
said Samuel Bowen, His especial licence that I, the said Samuel Bowen,
during the term of years therein expressed, should and lawfully might use,
exercise, and vend, within England, Wales, and Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
and also in all His Majesty's Colonies and Plantations abroad, my Invention of
"A METHOD OF PREPARING AND MAKING SAGO, VERMICELLI, AND SOY, FROM THE
PLANTS GROWING IN AMERICA;" in which said Letters Patent there is contained
a provisoe obliging me, the said Samuel Bowen, under my hand and seal, to
cause a particular description of the nature of my said Invention, and how
the same is to be prepared, to be inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of
Chancery within four calendar months after the date of the said recited
Letters Patent, as in and by the same (relation being thereunto had) may
more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said provisoe, I, the said
Samuel Bowen, do hereby declare that my said Invention of a method of
preparing and making sago, vermicelli, and soy, from the plants growing in
America, is described in the manner following (that is to say): -
Sago is made from six different things; the first sort or best is made from
the water lilly; the second, from the large sweet potatoes; the third, from the
yam; the fourth, from the palm tree; the fifth, from rice; and the sixth, from

page_text: lucktaw or Chinese vetches; and the rice is sometimes made use of only by
grinding to a flour, as other grain, which answer very well for pudding or
grewell, but will not keep so long as when prepared as the other, which is in
the following manner:-Take the above roots and grain, the roots to be grated
and the grain ground, all to be washed in hair sieves till all the flour or
powder is extracted from them; then let the water stand in the tub twelve
hours; then drain off the water, and the sediment is the sago, which must
afterwards be washed through a fine lawn sieve with the clearest rock water;
and when it is settled to the bottom, drain off the water and dry the sago in
the sun; when dry, let it be ground in a steel mill. Vermicelli is made from
one or all those different sorts of flour or powder, first made paste of, and then
forced through a machine, and afterwards dried in the sun. Soy is made of
callavances, fine wheat flour, salt, and water. Take thirty pounds of the
callavances, boil them in thirty gallons of water; when boiled, take them out,
and spread them on a table, and throw as much flour upon them as will stick
-to them, and let them lye six days covered with bay leaves; add to the water
forty pounds of common salt, and fill up the pot with water and give it a boil;
then strain it off: at the end of six days put the callavances into the water or
liquor, and let it stand five months in the sun; take the cover off in fine
weather, and take care that no water gets into the jarr or tub amongst the
soy; at the end of five or six months strain it off: the longer soy is kept the
better.
In witness whereof, I, the said Samuel Bowen, have hereunto sett my