CURIOUS FRUITS 



379 



We sometimes had fresh bread at Ega made from 

 American flour brought from Para, but it was sold at 

 ninepence a pound. I was once two years without tasting 

 wheaten bread, and attribute partly to this the gradual 

 deterioration of health which I suffered on the Upper 

 Amazons. Mandioca meal is a poor, weak substitute for 

 bread ; it is deficient in gluten, and consequently cannot 

 be formed into a leavened mass or loaf, but is obliged to 

 be roasted in hard grains in order to keep any length of 

 time. Cakes are made of the half-roasted meal, but they 

 become sour in a very few hours. A superior kind of 

 meal is manufactured at Ega of the sweet mandioca 

 (Manihot Aypi) ; it is generally made with a mixture of 

 the starch of the root, and is therefore a much more whole- 

 some article of food than the ordinary sort which, on the 

 Amazons, is made of the pulp after the starch has been 

 extracted by soaking in water. When we could get 

 neither bread nor biscuit, I found tapioca soaked in co£fee 

 the best native substitute. We were seldom without 

 butter, as every canoe brought one or two casks on each 

 return voyage from Para, where it is imported in con- 

 siderable quantity from Liverpool. We obtained tea in 

 the same way ; it being served as a fashionable luxury at 

 wedding and christening parties ; the people were at first 

 strangers to this article, for they used to stew it in a sauce- 

 pan, mixing it up with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it 

 with a spoon. Sometimes we had milk, but this was only 

 when a cow calved ; the yield from each cow was very 

 small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each case, 

 although the pasture is good, and the animals are sleek 

 and fat. 



Fruit of the ordinary tropical sorts could generally be 

 had. I was quite surprised at the variety of the wild 

 kinds, and of the delicious flavour of some of them. Many 

 of these are utterly unknown in the regions nearer the 

 Atlantic ; being the peculiar productions of this highly- 

 favoured, and little known, interior country. Some have 

 been planted by the natives in their clearings. The best 

 was the Jabiiti-p?ihe, or tortoise-foot ; a scaled fruit 

 probably of the Anonaceous order. It is about the size 

 of an ordinary apple ; when ripe the rind is moderately 

 thin, and encloses, with the seeds, a quantity of custardy 

 pulp of a very rich flavour. Next to this stands the Cuma 

 (Collophora sp.) of which there are two species, not unlike. 



