FEWKEs] CULTURE AREAS IN THE WEST INDIES 223 



Silt on it; and seeing every one laughing at his action, he became 

 angry and informed us by means of an interpreter that he did not 

 know what posture to assume among the French, and that as long as 

 he lived he would never return ! " 



Some of the chocolate slabs have short, stumpy legs ; others are 

 flat stones. These flat stones are, however, easily distinguished from 

 those used in cooking cassava bread. 



According to Labat," "before the Europeans Drought the iron 

 plates [for frying cassava cakes] they made their cassava on large 

 flat, thin stones, which they adjusted for this purpose in decreasing 

 the thickness. Many of these stones are found on the seashore. It 

 is a kind of sandstone or pebble of the color of iron, ordinarily 2 or 3 

 feet long and oval. They heated it for the purpose of removing more 

 easily the fragments and reducing it to the desired shape. I saw one 

 of these stones in 1701 at quay St. Louis, in the island of Santo 

 Domingo, at the house of a man named Castras, manager of the house 

 of the company of the Isle a Vache. It was 22 inches long and 14J 

 inches wide and 3 inches thick. It was very even, and it would have 

 been difficult to make it better with tools. In digging the ground 

 they found it with some pieces of pottery and figures of grotesque 

 shapes, which were supposed to be Indian idols, worshipped on the 

 island when it was discovered by the Spanish." 



The specimen shown in plate 113, A, is about twice as long as broad, 

 rounded below, and mounted on four stumpy legs. It lias a head on 

 one edge. This specimen was found near a town situated in the in- 

 terior of Porto Rico not far from the military road from San Juan 

 to Ponce. 



On certain gi-inders (pi. 113, C) the position of the head:^. legs, 

 and tails represented by simple extensions reminds one of a turtle 

 form. This specimen, now in the Berlin Museum, was found at Cape 

 Haitien. 



The most instructive form of chocolate grinders (stone seats or 

 " duhos ") in the Heye Museum is shown in figure 55. This beautiful 

 specimen is made of a greenish stone with surface very smooth and 

 polished on both the upper and lower surfaces. 



The head is a continuation of one side and closely resembles that 

 of a turtle, having a blunt nose, mouth extending far backward, and 

 eyes obscurely indicated by elongated depressions in the side of the 

 head. On each side of the neck above the forelegs are projections 

 comparable with the fore flippers of a turtle, without any indication 

 of claws or leg joints. The concave upper surface of the seat follows 

 the line of the neck, narrowing as it approaches the back of the head. 

 There are four short, stumpy round legs, one of which is broken, 

 which support the body of the seat. The diminutive size of this 



" Nouvean Voyage aux iBles de I'Amerlqne, vol. t, pp. 409-410. 



