204, APPENDIX. 
less and the starch increases, There is no food-product which com- 
pares with it in resisting drought. Even in the dryest seasons, it is 
like other trees “planted by the rivers of water,” and whole fields are 
green with its foliage, while all else is brown with the scorching sun, 
There are two varieties of the manioc, known as the sweet and the 
bitter; the first of which may be eaten with impunity, while the 
latter has a bitterish, milky juice, which is poisonous from containing 
prussic acid. But these roots are grated or otherwise reduced to a 
pomace, and then suspended in grass bags, when the poisonous juice 
drips out, or, being volatile, is dissipated by the heat in baking bread 
from it. The bitter variety is the principal kind used in British 
Guiana, while the sweet is the one mostly cultivated in Africa, The 
tapioca which comes into our houses is almost pure starch, and is 
made from the expressed juice of the root, which, on standing, deposits 
in the form of powder, and which, if dried without heat, will remain 
so. If heat be applied, it takes the form of the irregular masses we 
are accustomed to see, 
The root has the taste of chestnuts, and may be eaten raw. It is 
delicious, wholesome food when roasted in hot embers or broiled. 
Tf soaked till the skin can be drawn off and the fibrous heart drawn 
out and then dried, it makes good bread ; or, if broken up and fried 
in palm oil and salted, it is a good relish, and the Afrieans call it 
bomba. 
An extremely white and fine flour, called fuba, is made from the 
soaked and dried roots, and it is the chief food in Angola, 
The flour makes a thick porridge or mush——funje. The water is 
boiled and salted and set off the fire; after which fuba is stirred in 
until it can be cut into blocks, which may be taken in the hands and 
ing in the sun, with all the starch and tapioca in it, browning it 
slowly over the fire; after which it is eaten by stirring it into soup ORT 
boiled beans, oe is : ee oe oo ae 
