AND IN MANY OTHER PLACES. 
499 
Africa, in the islands of Bunck and Los Idolos, eat a earth 
oi which he had himself eaten, without being incommoded 
by it, and which also was a white and friable steatite. 
These examples of earth-eating in the torrid zone appear 
very strange. We are struck by the anomaly of finding a 
taste, which might seem to belong only to the inhabitants of 
the most sterile regions, prevailing among races of rude 
and indolent men who live in the finest and most fertile 
countries on the globe We saw at Popayan, and in several 
mountainous parts of Peru, lime reduced to a very fine 
powder, sold in the public markets to the natives among 
other articles of food. This powder, when eaten, is mingled 
with coca, that is, with the leaves of the Erythroxylon peru 
vianum. It is well known, that Indian messengers take no 
other aliment for whole days than lime and coca: both 
excite the secretion of saliva, and of the gastric iuice: they 
take away the appetite, without affording any nourishment 
to the body. In other parts of South America, on the 
coast of two de la Hacha, the Guajiros swallow lime alone 
without adding any vegetable matter to it. They carry with 
them a little box filled with lime, as we do snuff-boxes and 
as in Asia people carry a betel-box. This American custom 
excited the curiosity of the first Spanish navigators. Lime 
blackens the teeth; and in the Indian Axchipeiago as 
among several American hordes, to blacken the teeth is to 
beautify them. In the cold regions of the kingdom of 
Quito, the natives, of Tigua eat habitually from choice and 
without any injurious consequences, a very fine clay, mixed 
with quartzose sand. This clay, suspended in water renders 
it milky. We find in their huts large vessels filled with 
this water, which serves as a beverage, and which the In- 
dians call agm or leche de llanlca* 
When we reflect on these facts, we perceive that the 
appetite for clayey, magnesian, and calcareous earth is most 
common among the people of the torrid zone ; that it is 
not always a cause of disease ; and that some tribes eat earth 
from choice, whilst others (as the Ottomacs in America 
and the inhabitants of New Caledonia, in the Pacific) eat 
it from want, and to appease hunger. A great number of 
* Water or milk of clay. Llar.ka is a word of the general language 
of the Incas, signifying fine clay. 6 
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