498 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



A culinary art which remained largely confined to the aborigines 

 of tropical America and to the straight-haired races of the tropics of 

 the old world is the making of starch or meal from roots which have 

 been grated, soaked, washed or boiled with alkalies to destroy their 

 poisonous properties. Separated from the sugars and other readily 

 soluble substances which retain or absorb moisture, the starch of the 

 taro, cassava, arrowroot, canna and other root-crops can be quickly and 

 thoroughly dried, and will then keep indefinitely. In the absence of 

 cereals this simple expedient might well be deemed an epoch-making 

 discovery, since it rendered possible the accumulation of a permanent, 

 readily transportable food supply, and thus protected man from the 

 vicissitudes of the season and the chase. That the resulting economic 

 difference appeared striking to the hunting tribes of Guiana is apparent 

 in the name they gave to their agricultural neighbors, whom they called 

 ' Arawacks ' or ' eaters of meal.' 



Cassava in the raw state carries a deadly charge of prussic acid 

 and begins to decay in a few hours after being taken from the ground, 

 but properly prepared it furnishes the starch which keeps best, and 

 which in the form of tapioca our civilization is tardily learning to 

 appreciate as a wholesome delicacy. In view of its unpromising quali- 

 ties when raw, cassava would seem not to have been the first root-crop 

 from which meal was made, and yet it is used by many South American 

 tribes* who plant nothing else except the so-called peach palm ( Guiliel- 

 ma), which gives suggestive evidence of a cultivation much older than 

 that of the date palm, since it is generally seedless, and it is not known 

 in the wild state. The farinaceous fruits are made into meal and baked 

 into cakes in the same manner as the cassava, to which resource is neces- 

 sary during the months in which the single harvest of palm fruits is 

 exhausted. 



Cassava is, indeed, so distinctively the best, as well as the most 

 generously and continuously productive of the tropical root-crops, that 

 it could hardly have been known in the regions in which the others 

 were domesticated. Ever since the Spanish conquest put an end to 

 the isolation of the native peoples of tropical America the use of cassava 

 has been slowly extending at the expense of similar crops; it has also 

 found a footing in the Malay region and other parts of the East, though 

 from present indications it may be thousands of years before its value 

 will be properly appreciated. The slow extension of so desirable a 



* Some of these tribes are extremely primitive and in the absence of all 

 domestic implements grate their cassava on the exposed spiny roots of another 

 native palm (Iriartea exorhiza) . The Arawacks are similarly dependent upon 

 still a third palm (Mauritia) , from the pith of which they secure starch in a 

 manner strongly suggestive of that used with the sago palm of the Malay 

 region. 



