§54 



THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



position that he happens to own sago trees. If he does not, he can buy one standing 

 for two dollars. As the price of a man's labor in this region is estimated at ten cents 

 a day, the cost of food ready cooked for a man is four dollars a year. Yet, unaccount- 

 able as it seems to us, the natives, with these great natural flour-barrels, (only that 

 each contains three of our barrels,) standing around them, suffer from hunger. 

 Agassiz notices the same thing on the Amazon. If the people of any country really 

 prefer to go hungry rather than spend three weeks of the year in weeding a plantain- 

 field, or preparing sago, there seems no good reason why any one should interfere 

 with their way of enjoying themselves. By all means let them take their siesta and 

 starve afterwards. 



A SIESTA ON THE AMAZON. 



Life and death are strangely blended in the Cassava or Mandioca root {Tatropha 

 manihot). The juice a rapidly destructive poison, the meal a nutritious and agreeable 

 food, which, in tropical America, and chiefly in Brazil, forms a great part of the 

 people's sustenance. The hight to which the cassava attains varies from four to six 

 feet. It rises by a slender, woody, knotted stalk, furnished with alternate palmated 

 leaves, and springs from a tough branched woody root, the slender collateral fibres 

 of which swell into those farinaceous, parsnip-like masses, for which alone the plant is 

 cultivated. It requires a dry soil, and is not found at a greater elevation than 2,000 

 feet above the level of the sea. It is propagated by cuttings, which very quickly take 

 root, and in about eight months from the time of their being planted the tubers will 

 generally be in a fit state to be collected ; they may, however, be left in the ground 

 for many months without sustaining any injury. The usual mode of preparing the 

 cassava is to grind the roots after pealing off" the dark-colored rind, to draw out the 

 poisonous juice, and finally to bake the meal into thin cakes on a hot iron hearth. 



