Cuap. X. MANDIOCA MEAL. 285 
handsome bird, Cuvier’s toucan (Ramphastos Cuvieri) make their ap- 
pearance. They come in well-fed condition, and are shot in such quantities 
that every family has the strange treat of stewed and roasted toucans daily 
for many weeks. Curassow birds are plentiful on the banks of the 
Solimoens, but to get a brace or two requires the sacrifice of several 
days for the trip. A tapir, of which the meat is most delicious and 
nourishing, is sometimes killed by a fortunate hunter. I have still a 
lively recollection of the pleasant effects which I once experienced from 
a diet of fresh tapir meat for a few days, after having been brought toa 
painful state of bodily and mental depression by a month’s scanty rations 
of fish and farinha. 
We sometimes had fresh bread at Ega, made from American flour 
brought from Para, but it was sold at ninepence a pound. I was once two 
years without tasting wheaten bread, and attribute partly to this the 
gradual deterioration of health which I suffered on the Upper Amazons. 
Mandioca meal is a poor, weak substitute for bread; it is deficient in 
gluten, and consequently cannot be formed into a leavened mass or loaf, 
but is obliged to be roasted in hard grains in order to keep any length of 
time. Cakes are made of the half-roasted meal, but they become sour in 
a very few hours. A superior kind of meal is manufactured at Ega 
of the sweet mandioca (Manihot Aypi) ; it is generally made with a 
mixture of the starch of the root, and is therefore a much more whole- 
some article of food than the ordinary sort, which, on the Amazons, is 
made of the pulp after the starch has been extracted by soaking in 
water. When we could get neither bread nor biscuit, I found tapioca 
soaked in coffee the best native substitute. We were seldom without 
butter, as every canoe brought one or two casks on each return voyage 
from Para, where it is imported in considerable quantity from Liverpool. 
We obtained tea in the same way; it being served as a fashionable 
luxury at wedding and christening parties; the people were at first 
strangers to this article, for they used to stew it in a saucepan, mixing 
it up with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it with a spoon. Sometimes 
we had milk, but this was only when a cow calved; the yield from 
each cow was very small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each 
case, although the pasture is good, and the animals are sleek and fat. 
Fruit of the ordinary tropical sorts could generally be had. I was 
quite surprised at the variety of the wild kinds, and of the delicious 
flavour of some of them. Many of these are utterly unknown in the 
regions nearer the Atlantic ; being the peculiar productions of this highly 
favoured, and little known, interior country. Some have been planted 
by the natives in their clearings. The best was the /aduti-pihe, or 
tortoise foot ; a scaled fruit probably of the Anonaceous order. It is 
about the size of an ordinary apple ; when ripe, the rind is moderately 
thin, and encloses, with the seeds, a quantity of custardy pulp of a very 
rich flavour. Next to this stands the Cuma (Collophora sp.), of which 
there are two species, not unlike, in appearance, small round pears ; but 
the rind is rather hard, and contains a gummy milk, and the pulpy part 
is almost as delicious as that of the Jabuti-puhe. The Cuma tree is of 
moderate height, and grows rather plentifully in the more elevated and 
drier situations. A third kind is the Pama, which is a stone fruit 
