226 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



eaten. The preparation occupies no appreciable time. The winter 

 before last I saw one or two hundred Italian workmen repairing the 

 retaining wall to a river, and had reason to admire both their industry 

 and their simple, frugal habits. As the mid-day hour approached, one 

 of a gang of ten or twelve men would step aside and prepare the din- 

 ner. It nearly always consisted of 'polenta, or Indian -corn meal 

 boiled in water. It took the best part of an hour to prepare it, and 

 there was also the trouble of kettles, fires, providing wood, besides 

 many antecedent preparations, even when cooking was thus reduced 

 to its simplest proportions. The Canarian laborer has no such trouble. 

 The roasting of the grain is more quickly done than cooking polenta, 

 and can be prepared in larger quantity by the wife at home. 



The grinding is the same in both cases, but gofio has the great 

 advantage of being easily carried about the person in a bag, and ig 

 always ready to be eaten. It is also much more palatable. The 

 Canarian Archipelago consists of seven inhabited islands with a popu- 

 lation of two hundred and forty thousand persons. From the best 

 information I could get, I should think that fully two hundred thou- 

 sand of them live almost exclusively on gofio, as their fathers have 

 done before them, including their Guanche predecessors, from time 

 immemorial. I have been thus particular in giving, in some detail, 

 the origin, preparation, and importance of gofio in sustaining a large 

 population, because I believe this article to be worthy of attention on 

 the part of purveyers of farinaceous foods. If introduced into the 

 United States, it would add a delicious, wholesome, and highly nutri- 

 tious article of food, very convenient to use, to our already large vari- 

 ety. But gofio has other claims to our attention and favor than its 

 economy, convenience, and evident highly nutritive qualities. 



Finding it used, not only by the common people, for whom it con- 

 stitutes the chief article of sustenance as already stated, but also in 

 the homes of the wealthier citizens, children being especially fond of 

 and thriving well on it, I tried specimens of both wheat and maize 

 gofio and found them very palatable the maize especially so, hav- 

 ing a delicious, aromatic flavor which soon made me prefer it to 

 bread, especially in the morning. Very soon gofio, with a soft-boiled 

 egg, goat's milk, and coffee, constituted a satisfactory breakfast. In 

 fact, I liked it so well, and found it so digestible and nutritious, that 

 I kept to it and throve on it till, at the end of two months, it occurred 

 to me that during that time there had been no instance of " acid 

 stomach " to which, in the best of times, I had always been subject. 

 I left Teneriffe soon after, and during the voyage, and for some time 

 after landing in the West Indies, the gofio-breakfast was suspended. 

 After some weeks without it, the acidity returned very severely, owing 

 to exposure and fatigue. And, as usual, acidity once established, per- 

 sistently continued. After suffering several days I thought of the 

 gofio, a small quantity of which we had brought from Teneriffe. On 



