RoTH] PLANT FOOD 917 
spectively. Though both can be made into bread, it is usually only 
the bitter that is thus utilized. The method is as follows: 
236. After the cassava root has been peeled [with the teeth, up to 
the middle of last century, among the Uaupes River Indians (ARW, 
336) | and grated, it is placed ina squeezer (matapi, sec. 345), whereby 
its poisonous juice is expressed and the contained residuum (yuraha) 
removed and dried. On the Uaupes, however, instead of using the 
squeezer, the juice may be forced by hand pressure through a cir- 
cular sifter (pl. 51 B) supported on a triangular frame and collected 
in a receptacle below (KG, u, 206). The old-time Surinam Arawak 
used to put it into a plaited press with a board on top, on which the 
woman would sit, her weight exerting the necessary pressure (BER, 
70). The extracted juice, after boiling, is known as cassarip (sec. 
248). The residuum when dried is pounded up in a mortar, passed 
through a sifter, and placed on a circular clay grid, now substituted 
by iron, where over a smart fire it is made either into thin cakes 
(Avawak, kalli) or into “ farinha.” The difference is in the baking, 
for, instead of being allowed to consolidate into an entire cake, the 
cassava meal is kept costantly stirred as it rests on the iron griddle, 
so that in drying it assumes the form of an accumulation of small 
dry crumbs of wheaten bread (IT, 262). The cassava cake, the 
form in which it was eaten in the islands, is identical with the 
beiju of the central Brazils (WJ, 86). The preparation of farinha 
does not seem to be carried on much beyond the valley of the Amazon 
and its tributaries, where it is spoken of as couac (WJ, 86) or coaque 
(PBA, 56). 
237. Bitter cassava leaves make an excellent vegetable, and are pre- 
pared chiefly by Akawai, sometimes by Makusi, as follows: The 
leaves are denuded of their stalks, finely minced on a grater, and 
boiled, the water being changed from time to time until all bitter taste 
has gone. Game or any other meat available may then be added. 
Schomburgk was the first to note that the Arekuna eat the cooked 
terminal sprouts of the cassava (SR, 11, 234). 
238. When the supply of cassava for food has run short or become 
damaged through drought, excessive rain, or, as often as not, the 
Indians’ own neglect, its bulk is said to be increased by mixing in it 
chopped cassava leaves after being well dried. More often, however, 
other seeds are mixed with or substituted for it, the principal of 
which are the following: 
239. Mora seed (Dimorphandra mora Bth.): The skin is scraped 
off, and the seed then soaked in water for a week, when it is grated— 
though very hard to grate—and squeezed in ite straw—i. e., the re- 
mains of the ite leaf after its cortical fiber has been removed for 
60160°—24——15 
