NARRATIVE OF THE CRUISE. 235 



was a row of about thirty very small wooden houses or huts on a neighbouring hill, where 

 the slaves belonging to the owner of the sugar mill lived. 



" Cassava or Mandioca (Jatropha manihot), a Euphorbiaceous plant, allied to our 

 Common Spurge, was also grown on the estate, and there was a small manufactory 

 of farinha ; it is an indigenous South American plant, though now widely spread in 

 the tropics, and was cultivated in Brazil by the original inhabitants, before they were 

 molested by Europeans. The plant is not unlike the Castor-oU plant in appearance, and 

 is planted in rows slightly banked up ; the tubers are long and spindle-shaped. The 

 preparation of them was conducted in a small hut, a large fly-wheel being turned by a 

 negro, and driving, by means of a band, at a rapid rate, a small grinding wheel provided 

 with iron cutting teeth. The cassava root, which had been peeled and washed by a 

 negress, was reduced to a coarse meal by means of the grinding wheel ; the meal was 

 then put into a wooden trough, and a board was tightly pressed upon it by means of a 

 lever, heavily weighted with stones. The cassava was thus left in the press for twelve 

 hours, in order that the poisonous juice which it contains should be expressed. The 

 mass was then taken out and dried on a smooth stone surface, beneath which a wood 

 fire was burning. The resulting chalky-white meal, when sifted, yields samples of 

 three degrees of fineness; the finest, a white flour-like powder, is tapioca, i.e., true, 

 original tapioca, an imitation of which, made from potato starch, is commonly sold in 

 England ; the intermediate sample is used in starching clothes and cooking ; and the 

 coarsest substance, which is coarser than oatmeal, and consists of irregularly-shaped dried 

 chips of the roots, is called farinha, and is, as before described, commonly eaten with 

 gravy at dinner, taking the place of bread, and forming a staple article of food. 



" Our host was well to do ; he had thriven better than any of the emigrants who came 

 out with him, and, having no family to provide for, talked of going home soon. An old 

 German was staying in the house, an idler, whose real occupation was gardening, his 

 father having been imperial gardener, as he informed us with great pride ; he also 

 did a little trade in the way of peddling books. He had landed, more than twenty 

 years before, at Rio, and had reached Bahia on foot. He was now travelling from 

 estate to estate, and staying at each as long as he could, under pretence of doing up 

 the garden, but although he had been two months at the farm, the few square yards of 

 garden were as yet untouched. He had been too lazy to learn Portuguese, and under- 

 stood very little. He seemed, however, a favourite at the farm, and was well taken 

 care of, tea. being made as a special luxury for him, and he had many stories to tell, 

 and quaint sayings, and had amusingly strong Prussian sympathies. 



" The farmer guided us to a large tract of primitive forest close by, which was extremely 

 difficult to penetrate. Here I caught, with a butterfly net, a curious Bat {Saccopteryx 

 canina), which has remarkable glandular pouches on the under sides of the wings, at the 

 elbow -joints ; these pouches are w T ell developed only in the males, rudimentary in the 



