46 The Naturalist in Nicaragua 
that cultivated it were all more or less advanced in civilisa- 
tion; they were settled in towns; their traders travelled 
from one country to another with their wares; they were of a 
docile and tractable disposition, easily frightened into sub- 
mission. It is likely that these maize-eating peoples belonged 
to closely affiliated races. In the West India Islands they 
occupied most of Cuba and Hayti; but from Porto Rico 
southwards the islands were people by the warlike Caribs, 
who harassed the more civilised tribes to the north. From 
Cape Gracias 4 Dios southward, the eastern coast of America 
was peopled on its first discovery by much ruder tribes, who 
did not grow maize, but made bread from the roots of the 
mandioca (Manthot aipim); and still in British Guiana, on 
the Lower Amazon, and in north-eastern Brazil, farina made 
from the roots of the mandioca is the staple food. Maize 
has 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 great distinction 
between the peoples to which I shall have in the sequel to 
revert. In the West India Islands, Cuba and Hayti seem 
to have been peopled from Yucatan, and Florida, Porto 
Rico, 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 metlate, from the Aztec meilatl, 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 con- 
cave earthenware pan. The cakes so made are called ‘oritzllas, 
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 
