ANNOTATIONS AND ADDITIONS. 157 



huts, the clay balls being piled together in pyramidal heaps. The 

 very intelligent monk, Fray Ramon Bueno, a native of Madrid (who 

 lived twelve years among these Indians), assured us that one of them 

 would eat &om three quarters of a pound to a pound and a quarter 

 in a day. According to the accounts which the Otomacs themselves 

 give, this earth forms their principal subsistence during the rainy 

 season, though they eat at the same time occasionally, when they 

 can obtain it, a lizard, a small fish, or a fern root. They have such 

 a predilection for the clay, that even in the dry season, when they 

 can obtain plenty of fish, they eat a little earth after their meals 

 every day as a kind of dainty. These men have a dark copper-brown 

 complexion, and unpleasing Tartar features. They are fat, but not 

 large-bellied. The Franciscan monk who lived among them as a 

 missionary, assured us that he could perceive no alteration in their 

 health during the earth-eating season. 



The simple facts are therefore as follows : The Indians eat large 

 quantities of earth without injury to their health ; and they them- 

 selves regard the earth so eaten as an alimentary substance, i. c. they 

 feel themselves satisfied by eating it, and that for a considerable 

 time ; and they attribute this to the earth - or clay, and not to the 

 other scanty articles of subsistence which they now and then obtain 

 in addition. If you inquire of an Otomac about his winter pro- 

 vision (in tropical South America the rainy season is usually called 

 winter), he points to the heap of clay balls stored in his hut. But 

 these simple facts by no means determine the questions, whether the 

 clay be really an alimentary substance ? whether earths be capa- 

 ble of assimilation ? or whether they merely serve to appease hunger 

 by distending the stomach? I cannot pretend ta decide these 

 questions. (Rel. hist, t. ii. pp. 618-620.) It is curious that the 

 usually credulous and uncritical Father Gruinilla positively denies 

 the earth-eating as such. (Historia del Rio Orinoco, nueva impr. 

 1791, t. i. p. 179.) He affirms that the balls of clay had maize- 

 meal and crocodile-fat mixed with them. But the missionary, Fray 

 Ramon Bueno, and our friend and travelling companion, the lay 

 brother Fray Juan Gonzalez, who was lost at sea off the Coast of 

 Africa with part of our collections, both assured us that the Otomacs 

 never mix crocodile-fat with the clay; and of the meal said to 

 14 



-' 



