50-1 INTOXICATING POWDERS 





with the poya. Perhaps Father Q-umilla has confounded 

 the preparation of the earth, which the natives swallow, with 

 the custom they still retain (of which M, Bonpland acquired 

 the certainty on the spot) of burying in the ground the 

 beans of a species of uiimosacea,* to cause them to enter 

 into decomposition, so as to reduce them into a white 

 bread, savoury, but difficult of digestion. I repeat that the 

 balls of poya, which we took from the winter stores of the 

 Indians, contained no trace of animal fat, or of amylaceous 

 matter. Grumilla being one of the most credulous travellers 

 we know, it almost perplexes us to credit facts, which even 

 he has thought fit to reject. In the second volume of 

 his work, he however gainsays a great part of what he 

 advanced in the first ; he no longer doubts, that " half at 

 least (a lo menos) of the bread of the Ottomacs and the 

 Gruamos is clay." He asserts, "that children and full 

 grown persons not only eat this bread without suffering in 

 their health, but also great pieces of pure clay (muchos ter- 

 rones de pura greda.y He adds, that those who feel a 

 weight on the stomach physic themselves with the fat of the 

 crocodile, which restores their appetite, and enables them to 

 continue to eat pure earth. t It is certain, that the Gruamos 

 are very fond, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh of the 

 crocodile, which appeared to us white, and without any smell 

 of musk. In Sennaar, according to Burckhardt, it is equally 

 esteemed, and sold in the markets. 



The little village of Uruana is more difficult to govern 

 than most of the other missions. The Ottomacs are a rest- 

 less, turbulent people, with unbridled passions. They are 

 not only fond to excess of the fermented liquors prepared from 

 cassava and maize, and of palm-wine, but they throw them- 

 selves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we might say of 

 madness, by the use of the powder of niopo. They gather 

 the long pods of a mimosacea, which we have made known 

 by the name of Acacia niopO, J cut them into pieces, moisten 



* Of the genus Inga. f Gumilla, vol. ii, p. 260 . 



J It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, and not an Inga. We 

 brought home another species of mimosacea (the chiga of the Ottomacs, 

 and the tepa of the Maypures), that yields seeds, the flour of which ia 

 eaten at Uruana like cassava. From this flour the chiga bread is pre- 

 paid, which is so common at Cunariche, and on the banks of the Lowei 



