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glutinous milk, tolerably thick, destitute of all 

 acrimony, and of an agreeable and balmy smell. 

 It was offered to us in the shell of the tutumo or 

 calebash-tree. We drank considerable quanti- 

 ties of it in the evening before we went to bed, 

 and very early in the morning, without feeling 

 the least injurious effect. The viscosity of this 

 milk alone renders it a little disagreeable. The 

 Negroes and the free people, who work in the 

 plantations, drink it, dipping into it their bread 

 of maize or cassava. The majordomo of the 

 farm told us, that the Negroes grow sensibly 

 fatter during the season, when the palo de vaca 

 furnishes them with most milk. This juice, 

 exposed to the air, presents at it's surface, 

 perhaps in consequence of the absorption of the 

 atmospheric oxygen, membranes of a strongly 

 animalized substance, yellowish, stringy, and 

 resembling a cheesy substance. These mem- 

 branes, separated from the rest of the more 

 aqueous liquid, are elastic, almost like caout- 

 chouc ; but they undergo in time the same 

 phenomena of putrefaction as gelatine. The 

 people call the coagulum, that separates by the 

 contact of the air, cheese. This coagulum 

 grows sour in the space of five or six days, as I 

 observed in the small portions which I carried 

 to Nueva Valencia. The milk, contained in a 

 stopped vial, had deposited a little coagulum ; 

 and, far from becoming fetid, it exhaled con- 



