504 
INTOXICATIN' G rOWDEES 
with the poya. Perhaps Father Gum ilia has confounded 
the preparation of the earth, which the natives swallow, with 
the custom they still, retain (of which M. Bonpland acquired 
the certainty on the spot) of burying in the ground the 
beans of a species of mimosacea,* to cause them to enter 
into decomposition, so as to reduce them into a white 
bread, savoury, but difficult of digestion. I repeat that the 
balls of poya, which we took from the winter stores of the 
Indians, contained no trace of animal fat, or of amylaceous 
matter. Gumilla being one of the most credulous travellers 
we know, it almost perplexes us to credit facts, which even 
he has thought fit to reject. In the second volume of 
his work, he however gainsays a great part of what he 
advanced in the first; he no longer doubts, that “half at 
least (a lo menos) of the bread of the Ottomans and the 
Guamos is clay.” He asserts, “that children and full 
grown persons not only eat this bread without suffering in 
their health, but also great pieces of pure clay ( muchos ter- 
rones de pura greda.)’’ He adds, that those who feel a 
weight on the stomach physic themselves with the fat of the 
crocodile, which restores their appetite, and enables them to 
continue to eat pure earth.f It is certain, that the Guamos 
are very fohd, if not of the fat, at least of the flesh of the 
crocodile, which appeared to us white, and without any smell 
of musk. In Sennaar, according to Burckhardt, it is equally 
esteemed, and sold in the markets. 
The little village of Hruana is more difficult to govern 
than most of the other missions. The Ottomans are a rest- 
less, turbulent people, with unbridled passions. They are 
not only fond to excess of the fermented liquors prepared from 
cassava and maize, and of palm-wine, but they throw them- 
selves into a peculiar state of intoxication, we might say of 
madness, by the use of the powder of niopo. They gather 
the long pods of a mimosacea, which we have made known 
by the name of Acacia niopo, J cut them into pieces, moisten 
* Of the genus Inga. t Gumilla, vol. ii, p. 2fi0 . 
t It is an acacia with very delicate leaves, and not an Inga. We 
brought home another species of mimosacea (the chiga of the Ottomacs, 
and the tepa of the Maypures), that yields seeds, the flour of which ia 
eaten at Uruana like cassava. From this flour the chiga bread is pre- 
pared, which is so common at Cunariche, and on the hanks of the Lower 
