216 
THE UPPER AMAZONS. 
Chap. III. 
without butter, as every canoe brought one or two 
casks on each return voyage from Para, where it is 
imported in considerable quantity from Liverpool. We 
obtained tea in the same way ; it being served as a 
fashionable luxury at wedding and christening parties ; 
the people were at first strangers to this article, for 
they used to stew it in a saucepan, mixing it up 
with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it with a spoon. 
Sometimes we had milk, but this was only when a 
cow calved ; the yield from each cow was very 
small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each case, 
although the pasture is good, and the animals are 
sleek and fat. 
Fruit of the ordinary tropical sorts could generally be 
had. I was quite surprised at the variety of the wild 
kinds, and of the delicious flavour of some of them. 
Many of these are utterly unknown in the regions 
nearer the Atlantic ; being the peculiar productions 
of this highly-favoured, and little known, interior 
country. Some have been planted by the natives in 
their clearings. The best was the JabuU-puhe, or 
tortoise-foot ; a scaled fruit probably of the Anonaceous 
order. It is about the size of an ordinary apple ; when 
ripe the rind is moderately thin, and encloses, with the 
seeds, a quantity of custardy pulp of a very rich flavour. 
Next to this stands the Cum a (Collophora sp.) of which 
there are two species, not unlike, in appearance, small 
round pears ; but the rind is rather hard, and con- 
tains a gummy milk, and the pulpy part is almost as 
delicious as that of the Jabuti-puhe. The Cuma tree is 
of moderate height, and grows rather plentifully in the 
