MAN'S FOOTPRINTS. 279 



Here in tropical America the cultivated plants 

 are, as we said before, very few. Maize has 

 apparently been introduced into Guiana, and is 

 hardly known among the Indians of the far 

 interior. Cassava takes the place of corn. Its 

 root is boiled as a vegetable ; grated and pressed, 

 it is made into flat cakes, and the inspissated juice 

 is used with capsicums as a sauce for meat. For a 

 change sweet potatoes and yams are grown to a 

 very slight extent, but the staff of life is always 

 the cassava. This deadly poison must have been 

 in cultivation for ages; it has protected itself 

 against every wild animal, leaving man to make 

 the discovery that all its noxious properties can be 

 dissipated by proper cooking. In other climes 

 edible fruits and vegetables of many kinds have 

 been developed by cultivation ; the Indian has 

 virtually but this one. Yet he has succeeded in 

 doing a great deal with it, and in its absence would 

 starve. When, therefore, we look upon its beautiful 

 leaves and luxuriant stems, we cannot but wonder 

 how, in some bygone age, the way to eliminate its 

 poison and utilise it in such different ways was 

 first discovered. Nowhere, perhaps, in the vege- 

 table kingdom is a plant more noxious, and 

 certainly none so useful, yet the man of the forest 

 must have found this out very early indeed. Here, 



