22 TRAVELS ON THE AMAZON. [June, 



grated up into fibres and pressed into cakes, as anything I can 

 compare it with. When eaten, it is boiled or slightly roasted, 

 pulled to pieces, and mixed with vinegar, oil, pepper, onions, 

 and farinha, and altogether forms a very savoury mess for a 

 person with a good appetite and a strong stomach. 



After breakfast, we loaded our old Negro (who had come 

 with us to show the way) with plants that we had collected, and 

 a basket to hold anything interesting we might meet with on 

 the road, and set out to walk home, promising soon to make 

 a longer visit. We reached Nazare with boxes full of insects, 

 and heads full of the many interesting things we had seen, 

 among which the milk-giving tree, supplying us with a 

 necessary of life from so new and strange a source, held a 

 prominent place. 



Wishing to obtain specimens of a tree called Caripe, the 

 bark of which is used in the manufacture of the pottery of the 

 country, we inquired of Isidora if he knew such a tree, and 

 where it grew. He replied that he knew the tree very well, 

 but that it grew in the forest a long way off. So one fine 

 morning after breakfast we told him to shoulder his axe and 

 come with us in search of the Caripe, — he in his usual 

 dishabille of a pair of trousers, — shirt, hat, and shoes being 

 altogether dispensed with in this fine climate ; and we in our 

 shirt-sleeves, and with our hunting apparatus across our 

 shoulders. Our old conductor, though now following the 

 domestic occupation of cook and servant of all work to two 

 foreign gentlemen, had worked much in the forest, and was 

 well acquainted with the various trees, could tell their names, 

 and was learned in their uses and properties. He was of rather 

 a taciturn disposition, except when excited by our exceeding 

 dulness in understanding what he wanted, when he would 

 gesticulate with a vehemence and perform dumb-show with a 

 minuteness worthy of a more extensive audience ; yet he was 

 rather fond of displaying his knowledge on a subject of which 

 we were in a state of the most benighted ignorance, and at the 

 same time quite willing to learn. His method of instruction 

 was by a series of parenthetical remarks on the trees as he 

 passed them, appearing to speak rather to them than to us, 

 unless we elicited by questions further information. 



"This," he would say, "is Ocooba, very good medicine, 

 good for sore-throat," which he explained by going through the 



