Ed rible Products. 



cultivation and being a sufficiently large amount to justify the erection of machines 

 for the manufacture of starch and glucose for exportation. Tins nutritive plant 

 will take its place with the coconut tree, the tea plaut and the rubber plant as one 

 of the chief products of this Island. 



A. E. BYRDE, 



7th December, 1905. Vavuniya. 



{Annexure C.) 

 Cultivation of Cassava in British Guiana. 

 It is cultivated in what we should call chenas and, Mr. im Thurn states, 

 flourishes best in sandy soil. " At the beginning of the . . . wet season, the women 

 come . . . carrying on their backs baskets heavy with a load of cassava sticks to be 

 used as cuttings. 



Here and there at irregular intervals they loosen small patches of the soil, 

 hardly more than a foot in diameter, and in each of these they insert three or four 

 cassava sticks .... 



At last in the ninth or tenth month seeds appear among the hemp like leaves 

 at the ends of the straggling branches of the cassava plants. This is a sign that the 

 roots are ready for use. Again the work is done by the women. They cut down the 

 cassava and the weed bush and dig up the roots, not all at once, but as they are 

 required. Some short straight lengths of the stems of the cassava— sufficient to re- 

 produce the number of plants which have been dug up — arc cut and inserted in the 

 ground as before and in the same spots.— " Among the Indians of Guiana" by 

 E. F. im Thurn, 1883, pp. 251-2. 



{Annexure D.) 



Description of the Preparation of Cassava Root for Food in British Guiana. 



The one staple vegetable food of the Indians is afforded by the roots of the 

 cassava plant {Manihot utilissima), which are made into bread, like oat cakes, by 

 most of the tribes, into farine, a rough sort of meal, by others. No scene is 

 more characteristic of Indian life than that of the women preparing cassava. 



One woman squatting on her hams and armed with a big knife peels off 

 the skin of the cassava roots which lie in a heap at her side. Each root, after 

 being peeled, is washed and then thrown on to a new heap. A little way off 

 another woman stands, and grasping one of the peeled roots with both hands 

 scrapes it up and down an oblong board or grater studded with small frag- 

 ments of stone and so roughened like a nutmeg-grater. One end of the grater 

 stands in a trough on the ground, the other rests against the woman's knees. 

 It is violent exercise. As the woman scrapes, her body swings down and up 

 again from her hips. The rhythmic 'swish' caused by the scraping of the juicy 

 root is the chief sound in the house ; for the labour is too heavy to permit of 

 talking. The cassava, which slips as pulp from the scraper into the trough, is 

 collected and put into a long wicker woven matapie which hangs from the 

 roof. This matapie or cassava squeezer is in principle exactly like the not un- 

 common toy known as a "Siamese Link." It is a cylinder seven or eight feet 

 long and five or six inches in diameter made of closely woven strips of pliant 

 bark. The upper end is open and has a loop by Avhich the matapie may be 

 suspended from one of the beams of the house ; the lower end is closed, but it 

 also has a loop, the use of which will presently appear. The cassava, saturated 



9 



