Horticulture in Foreign Lands. 



235 



used as an esculent, if care is taken to grate or grind the root 

 finely, to express the juice thoroughly and to dry the meal in 

 the sun or a kiln, a process which entirely removes all the del- 

 eterious principles from the poisonous species. Both of them 

 are used to manufacture starch and flour, arid the mandioca 

 duke is universally used as a table vegetable, being boiled like 

 the parsnip, which it somewhat resembles in taste. The boiled 

 root is often put in soups, or sliced in chips and fried like the 

 "Saratoga chips" of the potato in our country, and forms a 

 very palatable article of food. In the form of flour, it is finely 

 pulverized and made into bread, called "chipa" or else dried 

 in lumps, when it % becomes the tapioca of commerce. In pre- 

 paring the chipa bread, the mandioca flour is mixed with a 

 little ground rice, cheese and coriander seed, made up into rolls 

 or rings and baked in an oven. It is the common bread of the 

 country, and when fresh not at all inferior to the bread made 

 of wheat flour. In fact, it subserves all the purposes for which 

 wheat flour is used. I have eaten delicious sponge cake made 

 of it, and it answers equally well for all kinds of pastry. 



Next to mandioca as an article of food is corn, or " maiz," 

 as it is commonly called here, which is largely cultivated in 

 gardens over the country. This, however, is not the glossy- 

 grained maize or Indian corn of New England, but more like 

 the white corn of our southern states. Apparently it has be- 

 come mixed with a yellow variety, as in color the ears are 

 spotted or blotched with yellow, and they are considerably 

 smaller than those of the southern corn. When eaten, the 

 ears are either roasted before the fire or the kernels are ground 

 into meal or broken up in a mortar and made into bread, much 

 in the same manner as the chipa. Chipa and maiz bread are 

 the staple food of the native Paraguayans. Sweet corn, such 

 as we have in the United States, I have never seen here, al- 

 though there is no reason why it might not grow. 



Potatoes of all kinds are easily produced in the market gar- 

 dens. The Irish potato is everywhere cultivated, but whether 

 owing to the character of the soil or the lack of attention 

 (probably the latter), it is much inferior in size and quality to 

 the potato of our country. Small potatoes, not much larger 

 than a marble, and somewhat watery, are frequently exposed 

 in the markets for sale and put upon the restaurant tables. 

 Sweet potatoes and yams do much better. The finest sorts 



