RoTH] DRINKS 229 
manufacture as follows: Prepare your kereli, and place it with warm 
(not boiling) water in a calabash. Having, in the course of making 
household cassava cake, expressed the fluid from the squeezed cassava 
by means of the matapi, pour this into a pot and boil until all bit- 
terness has disappeared, by which time it will have become fairly 
thick. As soon as it gets cold add a little of the red liquor, pre- 
viously obtained by boiling red “ potato,” together with kereli, in 
sufficient proportion to form a soft mush. This will keep good for 
certainly a week. A portion, as may be required, is put into a cup of 
water, when it will more or less melt, and can then be drunk straight- 
away. I am very suspicious that the sakula or sakura (sec. 262) is 
more or less identical with beltiri (PEN, 1, 114). 
260. Ovaku, ouicou, etc., had an established reputation in its day, 
and was known equally well in Cayenne as it was out on the islands. 
I am indebted to Fathers Grillet and Bechamel, who were traveling 
in French Guiana during the latter part of the seventeenth century, 
for the following description both of its nature and manufacture: 
“What is ordinarily used is as white as milk and of the same con- 
sistence. It is very refreshing and nourishing, and is composed 
of cassava baked after their ordinary manner, and potatoes boiled 
with it till they are of the consistence of paste. This they put into 
baskets lined with the leaves of bonano (? banana) trees, in which 
it keeps good for a month. and then begins to grow sour, but not 
quite so soon if it be kept in a cool place. When they use it, they 
steep as much as they have present occasion for in a suflicient quan- 
tity of water, and if they are at leisure they strain it. But they often 
only steep it and drink it without straining, and if sugar or sugar- 
canes bruised be mixed with it it comes very near the taste, color, 
and consistence of orgeate, the use of which the French have taken 
from the Italians some years since. This drink is called ovaku 
upon the Continent and oviku in the islands. It is believed that 
the reason why the Europeans can never attain to make it so good 
as the Indians do is because these chew the potatoes and cassava 
before they boil them together, and understand better what degree 
of boiling they require to give this liquor its greatest perfection. 
But seeing its preparation in this way turns one’s stomach more 
than the reading of it; and the wine that washes the dirty feet of 
the grape gatherers as they tread the grapes is no less nauseous, 
but the fermentation both of the one and the other correct all this 
uncleanness” (GB, 51). The Carib Islanders apparently had two 
sorts of ouicou made with and without potatoes, respectively. In 
the latter case it was manufactured as follows: After taking the 
cassava off the grid, they put it somewhere in the house and cover 
it with manioc leaves and some heavy stones to “heat” it, which it 
