540 MEIJICINE-MEN OF THE APACHE. 



There is nothing in the records relating to Victoria respecting the 

 use of any earth for the purpose of appeasing hunger, but Grey men 

 tions that one kind of earth, pounded and mixed with the root of the 

 Mcne (a species of Hsemadorum), is eaten by the natives of West Aus 

 tralia. 



The Apache and Navajo branches of the Athapascan family are not 

 unacquainted with the use of clay as a comestible, although among the 

 former it is now scarcely ever used and among the latter used only as 

 a condiment to relieve the bitterness of the taste of the wild potato; in 

 the same, manner it is known to both the Zufii and Tusayan. 



Wallace says that eating dirt was &quot; a very common and destructive 

 habit among Indians and half-breeds in the houses of the whites. 2 



&quot;Los apassionados A comer tierra son los Iiidios Otomacos.&quot; 3 



11 The earth which is eaten by the Ottomacs [of the Rio Orinoco] is 

 fat and unctuous.&quot; 4 



Waitz 5 cites Heusinger as saying that the Ottomacs of the Rio Ori 

 noco eat large quantities of a fatty clay. 



Clay was eaten by the Brazilians generally. 6 



The Romans had a dish called &quot; alica&quot; or u frumeuta,&quot; made of the 

 grain zea mixed with chalk from the hills at Puteoli, near Naples. 7 



According to the myths of the Cingalese, their Brahmins once &quot; fed 

 on it [earth] for the space of 00,000 years.&quot; 11 



PREHISTORIC FOODS USED IN COVENANTS. 



It has been shown that the Apache, on several occasions, as when 

 going out to meet strangers, entering into solemn agreements, etc., 

 made use of the hoddentin. A similar use of food, generally prehistoric, 

 can be noted in other regions ot the world. 



It was a kind of superstitious trial used among the Saxons to purge 

 themselves of any accusation by taking a piece of barley bread and eat 

 ing it with solemn oaths and execrations that it might prove poisonous 

 or their last morsel if what they asserted or denied was not true. 9 

 Those pieces of bread were first execrated by the priest, from which he 

 infers that at a still earlier day sacramental bread may have been used 

 for the same purpose. 



At Rome, in the time of Cicero and Horace, a master who suspected 

 that his slaves had robbed him conducted them before a priest. They 

 were each obliged to eat a cake over which the priest had &quot; pronounced 

 some magical words (carmine infectum).^ 10 



Smyth, Aborigines of Victoria, vol. 1, p. xxxiv. 

 2 Travels on the Amazon, p, 311. 



3 Gumilla, Orinoco, Madrid, 1711, p. 102; the Guamas, also, ibid., pp. 102 and 108. 

 Malte-Brun, Univ. Geog., Phila., 1827, vol.3, lib. 87, p. 323. 

 6 Anthropology, vol. 1, p. 116. 

 6 Spencer. Desc. Sociology. 

 Pliny, Xat. History, lib. 18, cap. 29. 

 * Asiatick Researches, Calcutta, 1801, vol. 7, p. 440. 



&quot;liloniit, Tenures of Land and Customs of Manors. London. 1874, p. 2233. 

 &quot;Salverto, Philosophy of Manic, vol. 2. p. 140. 



