THE CUSTOM OF BIRT-EATFXG. 
495 
They are men of very robust constitution ; but ill-iooking, 
savage, vindictive, and passionately fond of fermented liquors. 
They are omnivorous animals in the highest degree ; and 
therefore the other Indians, who consider them as barba- 
rians, have a common saying, “ nothing is so loathsome hut 
that an Ottomac will eat it.” "While the waters of the 
Orinoco and its tributary streams are low, the Ottomacs 
subsist on fish and turtles. The former they kill with sur- 
prising dexterity, by shooting them with an arrow when 
they appear at the surface of the water. When the rivers 
swell fishing almost entirely ceases.* It is then very diffi- 
cult to procure fish, which often fails the poor missionaries, 
on fast-days as well as flesh-days, though all the young 
Indians are under the obligation of “ fishing for the con- 
vent.” During the period of these inundations, which last 
two or three months, the Ottomacs swallow a prodigious 
quantity of earth. We found heaps of earth-balls in their 
huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet high. These 
balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which 
the Ottomacs eat, is a very fine and unctuous clay, of a 
yellowish grey colour; and, when being slightly baked at 
the fire, the hardened crust has a tint inclining to red, 
owing to the oxide of iron which is mingled with it. We 
brought away some of this earth, which we took from the 
winter-provision ot the Indians; and it is a mistake to 
suppose that it is steatitic, and that it contains magnesia. 
Yauquelin did not discover any traces of that substance 
in it : but he found that it contained more silex than alumina, 
and three or four per cent of lime. 
The Ottomacs do not eat every kind of clay indifferently ; 
they choose the alluvial beds or strata, which contain the 
most unctuous earth, and the smoothest to the touch. I 
inquired of the missionary whether the moistened clay were 
made to undergo that peculiar decomposition which is indi- 
cated by a disengagement of carbonic acid and sulphuretted 
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 
* In South America, as in Egypt and Nubia, the swelling of the rivers, 
which occurs periodically in every part of the torrid zone, is erroneously 
attributed to the melting of the snows. 
