642 



made to undergo, as Father Gumilla asserts, 

 that peculiar decomposition, which is indicated 

 by a disengagement of carbonic acid and sul- 

 phuretted hydrogen, and which is designated in 

 every language by the term of putrefaction * ; 

 but he assured us, that the natives neither cause 

 the clay to rot, nor do they mingle it with flour 

 of maize, oil of turtles' eggs, or fat of the croco- 

 dile. We ourselves examined, both at the 

 Oroonoko and after our return to Paris, the balls 

 of earth which we brought away with us, and 

 found no trace of the mixture of any organic 

 substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The 

 savage regards every thing as nourishing, that 

 appeases hunger : when therefore you inquire of 

 an Otomac, on what he subsists during the two 

 months when the river is the highest, he shows 

 you his balls of clayey earth. This he calls his 

 principal food; for at this period he can seldom 

 procure a lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish 

 swimming at the surface of the water. If the 

 Indian eat earth from want during two months 

 (and from three quarters to five quarters of a 

 pound in twenty-four hours), he does not the 

 less regale himself with it during the rest of the 

 year. Every day in the season of drought, when 



* Tienen hoyos en la qual hai greda fina, bien amasada, 

 podrida a fuerza de continua agua, como la preparan los alfa» 

 reros para hacer loza fina. Gumilla, torn. \, p. 200. 



