roTH] FOOD ADJUNCTS 225 
handfuls (BE, 231). The latter gentleman is of opinion that the 
want of salt of a wholesome quality and in sufficient quantity is 
another reason why the Indian sinks so rapidly when attacked by 
disease. 
253. Earth eating appears to have been a more or less common 
practice throughout the Guianas, and most travelers have drawn at- 
tention to it. Thus: “The Guama and Otomac, their neighbors, are 
earth eaters (G, 1, 166). Even while bathing the Otomae will eat 
of the chalk from the banks (barrancas). . . . To keep their children 
quiet mothers will give them earth to lick and suck. If kneaded with 
a certain sauce .. . they like it better (G, 1, 172). The bread, made 
- with alligator fat, of the Otomac is at least half of it chalky earth, 
which naturally ought to injure those who eat it; but the very op- 
posite is the case, because these Indians excel the other nations in 
health, strength, and size. This moved me to inquire,” says Gumilla, 
“how it came to pass that other nations when out of pure cussedness 
(por vicio), they eat earth, as happens with young children and 
pregnant women, they soon lose color, become languid, and sicken, 
... I have found that alligator fat entirely cleanses the stomach 
without allowing any earth to remain in it; an ounce of the fat, with 
a little sugar to avoid nausea, taken fasting, three or four mornings 
running” (G, 1, 224). Humboldt, however, qualifies Gumilla’s state- 
ments as follows: “The Otomac do not eat every kind of clay indif- 
ferently ; they choose the alluvial beds or strata, which contain the 
most unctuous earth and the smoothest to the touch . . . the natives 
neither cause the earth to rot, nor do they mingle it with flour of 
maize, oil of turtle’s egg, or fat of the crocodile” (AVH, mu, 495). 
But elsewhere this author would hardly seem to regard earth as an 
ordinary article of everyday diet, but rather to assuage the cravings 
of hunger in seasons of scarcity (AVH, 11, 196). Crévaux says that 
all the Cayenne Carib are earth eaters. In each house, upon the 
boucan where the meat is smoked, one will find some clay balls, 
which the Indians smoke dry and eat pulverized. Always an hour 
after each meal they will take one of these balls, remove the outer 
layer that has been blackened, scrape the inside with a knife 
and thus obtain a fine powder, of which they swallow 5 or 6 grams 
in two doses (Cr, 287). Very many children on the upper parts of 
the Amazons have this strange habit of eating earth, baked clay, 
pitch wax, and other similar substances; not only Indians, but 
Negroes and whites. It is not, therefore, peculiar to the famous 
Otomac of the Orinoco described by Humboldt (HWB, 275). De 
Goeje in Surinam speaks of seeing a Trio woman eat earth (GO, 5) 
Judging from another traveler’s account, edible clay must be regarded 
as quite a delicacy (KG, m1, 291). 
