Chap. III. MANDIOCA. 215 
every family has the strange treat of stewed and roasted 
toucans daily for many weeks. Curassow birds are ^ 
plentiful on the banks of the Solimoens, but to get a 
brace or two requires the sacrifice of several days for the 
trip. A tapir, of which the meat is most delicious and 
nourishing, is sometimes killed by a fortunate hunter. 
I have still a lively recollection of the pleasant effects 
which I once experienced from a diet of fresh tapir 
meat for a few days, after having been brought to a 
painful state of bodily and mental depression by a 
month's scanty rations of fish and farinha. 
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 sub- 
stitute for bread ; it is deficient in gluten, and conse- 
quently 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 wholesome article 
of food than the ordinary sort which, on the Amazons, 
is made of the pulp after the starch has been ex- 
tracted by soaking in water. When we could get 
neither bread nor biscuit, I found tapioca soaked in 
coffee the best native substitute. We were seldom 
