Chap. III. MANDIOCA. 215 



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 to a 

 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 sub- 

 stitute for bread ; it is deficient in gluten, and conse- 

 quently 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 wholesome article 

 of food than the ordinary sort which, on the Amazons, 

 is made of the pulp after the starch has been ex- 

 tracted 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 



