On the Aborigines of Brazil, 27 



The flesh, which the Indian stores up, is either carelessly 

 dried on some open wood-work by means of fire, or in the 

 sun, and then rolled up in leaves of palm-trees or of a large 

 species of plantain, and kept in the roof of his hut, which is 

 always filled with smoke. The animal most frequently 

 hunted for this purpose is the ape, whose flesh resembles 

 in taste that of rabbit, but by the mode of preparation is 

 rendered very dry and tough. These animals, after having 

 been skinned and disembowelled, are dried, but never salted.* 

 Of birds, the Indian collects chiefly storks, ducks, divers, 

 herons, and lapwings. Small fishes are simply dried in the 

 sun, packed in baskets, and placed in the smoke of the 

 hut : large fishes, such as the Pirarucu (Sudis Gigas) are 

 gutted and hung up in pieces to dry. The Indians are 

 very irregular in all their domestic processes. The apes 

 are hunted during the dry season, and remain stored up 

 for months until the rains. In this time the flesh becomes 

 so tough and dry, that no stomach, save that of the Indian 

 could digest it. This is also the case with their birds. 

 The Indian watches chiefly for the birds of passage, when 

 they visit his settlements. The quantity of them that he 

 kills at some seasons is so immense, that he disregards every 

 rule of prudence and foresight in preserving them. It thus 

 happens that he stores up a kind of food that is very indi- 

 gestible, and from the quantity of oil which it contains par- 

 ticularly ill-suited to a warm climate. The Indian is just 

 as careless with his fish, which being dried in the sun with- 

 out any salt, is such as none but an Indian palate could to- 

 lerate. From the use of this bad oily food, diarrhoeas and 

 caeliac fluxes are common in the rainy season. Add to this 

 the eating of unripe fruits, and we need not wonder that 

 whole villages are attacked with dysentery, which from want 



* The North American Indians have a great advantage in the plentiful supply 

 of buffalo flesh, which they dry in the sun, without the aid of salt or smoke, and at 

 times pound into a powder called pemican..-— Tr\ 



