OUTFIT FOR TRAVELLING 349 



fifty cents) was cheap for a chicken, and eggs at five hundred reis 

 (fifteen cents) apiece were a rarity. Sugar was bought at the rate 

 of one to two milreis a kilo — in a country where sugar-cane grows 

 luxuriantly. The main dependence is the mandioc, or farina, as it 

 is called. It is the bread of the country and is served at every 

 meal. The native puts it on his meat and in his soup and mixes 

 it with his rice and beans. When he has nothing else, he eats the 

 farina, as it is called, by the handful. It is seldom cooked. The 

 small mandioc tubers when boiled are very good and are used 

 instead of potatoes. Native beans are nutritious and form one of 

 the chief foods. 



In the field the native cook wastes much time. Generally pro- 

 vided with an inadequate cooking equipment, hours are spent 

 cooking beans after the day's work, and. then, of course, they are 

 often only partially cooked. A kettle or aluminium Dutch oven 

 should be taken along, large enough to cook enough beans for both 

 breakfast and dinner. The beans should be cooked all night, a 

 fire kept burning for the purpose. It would only be necessary 

 then to warm the beans for breakfast and dinner, the two South 

 American meals. 



For meat the rubber hunter and explorer depends upon his rifle 

 and fish-hook. The rivers are full of fish, which can readily be 

 caught, and in Brazil, the tapir, capybara, paca, agouti, two or 

 three varieties of deer, and two varieties of wild pig, can occasionally 

 be shot ; and most of the monkeys are used for food. Turtles and 

 turtle eggs can be had in season, and a great variety of birds, some 

 of them delicious in flavour and heavy in meat. In the hot, moist 

 climate fresh meat will not keep, and even salted meat has been 

 known to spoil. For use on the Roosevelt expedition I arranged 

 a ration for five men for one day packed in a tin box ; the party 

 which went down the Diivida made each ration do for six men for 

 a day and a half, and in addition gave over half the bread or hard- 

 tack to the camaradas. By placing the day's allowance of bread 

 in this same box, it was lightened sufficiently to float if dropped 

 into water. There were seven variations in the arrangement of 

 food in these boxes, and they were numbered from 1 to 7, so that 

 a different box could be used every day of the week. In addition 

 to the food, each box contained a cake of soap, a piece of cheese- 



