Chap. III. 
YPADtJ. 
211 
holds with their groups of Indian servant girls. The 
term agriculture cannot be applied to this business ; 
in this primitive country plough, spade, and hoe 
are unknown even by name. The people idle away 
most part of the time at their rogas, and have no 
system when they do work, so that a family rarely 
produces more than is required for its own con- 
sumption. 
The half-caste and Indian women, after middle age, 
are nearly all addicted to the use of Ypadii, the powdered 
leaves of a plant (Erythroxylon coca) which is well known 
as a product of the eastern parts of Peru, and is to the 
nati ves of these regions what opium is to the Turks and 
betel to the Malays. Persons who indulge in Ypadu at 
Ega are held in such abhorrence, that they keep the 
matter as secret as possible ; so it is said, and no doubt 
with truth, that the slender result of the women's daily 
visits to their to gas, is owing to their excessive use of 
this drug. They plant their little plots of the tree in 
retired nooks in the forest, and keep their stores of the 
powder in hiding-places near the huts which are built 
on each plantation. Taken in moderation, Ypadu has 
a stimulating and not injurious effect, but in excess it 
is very weakening, destroying the appetite, and pro- 
ducing in time great nervous exhaustion. I once had 
an opportunity of seeing it made at the house of a 
Maraua Indian on the banks of the Jutahi. The 
leaves were dried on a mandioca oven, and afterwards 
pounded in a very long and narrow wooden mortar. 
When about half pulverised, a number of the large 
leaves of the Cecropia palmata (candelabrum tree) were 
