AND IN MANY OTHER PLACES. 4D9 



Africa, in the islands of Bunck and Los Idolos, eat a earth 

 of which he had himself eaten, without being incommoded 

 by it, and which also was a white and friable steatite. 

 These examples of earth-eating in the torrid zone appear 

 very strange. We are struck by the anomaly of finding a 

 taste, which might seem to belong only to the inhabitants of 

 the most sterile regions, prevailing among races of rude 

 and indolent men, who live in the finest and most fertile 

 countries on the globe. "We saw at Popayan, and in several 

 mountainous parts of Peru, lime reduced to a very fine 

 powder, sold in the public markets to the natives among 

 other articles of food. This powder, when eaten, is mingled 

 with coca, that is, with the leaves of the Erythroxylon peru- 

 vianum. It is well known, that Indian messengers take no 

 other aliment for whole days than lime and coca : both 

 excite the secretion of saliva, and of the gastric jtice ; they 

 take away the appetite, without affording any nourishment 

 to the body. In other parts of South America, on the 

 coast of Rio de la Hacha, the Guajiros swallow lime alone, 

 without adding any vegetable matter to it. They carry with 

 them a little box filled with lime, as we do snuff-boxes, and 

 as in Asia people carry a betel-box. This American custom 

 excited the curiosity of the first Spanish navigators. Lime 

 blackens the teeth; and in the Indian Archipelago, a 

 among several American hordes, to blacken the teeth is to- 

 beautify them. In the cold regions of the kingdom of 

 Quito, the natives of Tigua eat habitually from choice, and 

 without any injurious consequences, a very fine clay, mixed 

 with quartzose sand. This clay, suspended in water, renders 

 it milky. We find in their huts large vessels filled with 

 this water, which serves as a beverage, and which the In- 

 dians call agua or leche de llanka* 



When we reflect on these facts, we perceive that the 

 appetite for clayey, magnesian, and calcareous earth is most 

 common among the people of the torrid zone ; that it is 

 not always a cause of disease ; and that some tribes eat earth 

 from choice, whilst others (as the Ottomacs in America, 

 and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, in the Pacific) eat 

 it from want, and to appease hunger. A great number of 



* Water or milk of clay. Llanka is a word of the general language 

 rf the Incas, signifying fine clay. 



2 K 2 



