56 THE NATURALIST IX NICARAGUA. [Ch. IV. 



mandioca is the staple food. Maize lias been introduced 

 by the Portuguese, but it has no native name, and is 

 used mostly for feeding cattle and fowls, scarcely at all for 

 the food of the people. This fundamental difference in 

 the food of the indigenes points to a very early separa- 

 tion between the peoples. In the "West Indian Islands, 

 Cuba and Hayti seem to have been peopled from 

 Yucatan, and Florida, Porto Eico, and all the islands 

 to the southwards, from Venezuela. 



In Central America, the bread made from the maize 

 is prepared at the present day exactly as it was in 

 ancient Mexico. The grain is first of all boiled along 

 with wood ashes or a little lime : the alkali loosens the 

 outer skin of the grain, and this is rubbed off with the 

 hands in running water, a little of it at a time, placed 

 upon a slightly concave stone, called a mctlatc, from, the 

 Aztec metlatl, on which it is rubbed with another stone 

 shaped like a rolling-pin. A little water is thrown on 

 it as it is bruised, and it is thus formed into paste. A 

 ball of the paste is taken and flattened out between the 

 hands into a cake about ten inches diameter and three- 

 sixteenths of an inch thick, which is baked on a slightly 

 concave earthenware pan. The cakes so made are 

 called tortillas, and are very nutritious. When travelling,. 

 I preferred them myself to bread made from wheaten 

 flour. When well made and eaten warm, they are very 

 palatable. 



There are a few small sugar plantations near Pital. 

 The juice is pressed out of the canes by rude wooden 

 rollers set upright in threes, the centre one driving the 

 one on each side of it by projecting cogs. The whole 

 are set in motion by oxen travelling round the same as- 



