854 ANNUAL REGISTER, 1809. 



ence of this wonderful creature. 

 To contribute in an}' degree to 

 your pleasure or amusement, will 

 add to the happiness of, Madam, 

 Your greatly obliged, 

 (Signed) Eliz. Mackay, 

 C. Mackenzie. 



Eaters of Earth. \_From Humbold^s 

 Physical View of the Eijuatorial 

 Jiegions.Jl 



On the banks of the Meta and 

 the Oronooko live the Ottomaci, a 

 hideous race, inclining to corpu- 

 lency, with the gross and strongly 

 marked features of the Tartars. 

 For the greater part of the year 

 they live on lish, which they kill, 

 at the surface of the water, in 

 rivers, with arrows. But, during 

 the rainy season, when the rivers, 

 overflowing their banks, inundate 

 the plains, those savages subsist on 

 a fat or unctuous earth, which is 

 a species of cla)' mixed with oxid 

 of iron. They collect it with great 

 care, trying, as they gather it, 

 what is most palatable. They form 

 it into balls of four or five inches in 

 diameter, and then dress it by slow- 

 ly boiling or baking it. In their 

 huts you every where see great 

 quantities of this sort of provisions. 

 These balls, when they are going to 

 be used, are steeped in water, and 

 every individual eats about a pound 

 a day. The only thing they add 

 to thisstrange kind of food, is some- 

 times, by way of seasoning some 

 small fishes, lizards, or dried roots. 

 The quantities which the Ottomaci 



consume of this unctuous earth, 

 and the avidity with which they 

 devour it, seems to prove that it 

 does something more than merely 

 distending and abating the keen 

 action of the stomach, and that 

 the power of digestion may, i;i 

 some measure, transform the more 

 subtle particles into animal sub- 

 stance.* 



Siluatiom and Climate of the Cilij 

 of Marocco. \_From Mr. Jack- 

 son's Accotitd of the Empire of 

 Morocco.'] 



The city of Marocco is situated 

 in a fruitful plain, abounding in 

 grain, and all the other necessaries 

 of life, and depastured by sheep 

 and cattle and horses of a superior 

 breed, called (sift Ain Toga) the 

 breed of Ain Toga. At a distance, 

 the city has a beautiful and ro- 

 mantic appearance, the adjacent 

 country being interspersed with 

 groves of the lofty palm, and the 

 towering snow-topped mountains 

 of Atlas, in the back-ground, 

 seem to cool the parched and weary 

 traveller reposing in the plains ; 

 for although none 



" Can hold a fire in his hand, 

 " By thinking on the frosty Caucasus.' 

 Shakespeare. 



yet, in the sultry season, the tra- 

 veller, by viewing these moun- 

 tains, experiences a sensation diffi- 

 cult to be described.f The lily of 



the 

 • Comiiare Professor Davie's discovery that iron enters largely mto the basis 

 of the blood. 



f In the books of the great Lord Bacon, dc Atigmcutis Scientianim, a variety of 

 subjects aie enumerated, the consideration of whidi might Uuow some light 



on 



