32 
GUATEMALA. 
helped us to prolong our meal. It was difficult to make 
the boys understand that they must not spit on the floor 
as they handed us the dishes. A large brick oven in the 
courtyard furnished bread for a number of families, and 
good bread. 
In our walks about the town we were often politely 
invited into the houses, and so had a chance to see the 
cassava bread making. The tuberous roots of the manioc 
(Manihot utilissima ) often attain a weight of twenty or 
thirty pounds, and are full of a poisonous juice, deadly when 
swallowed. A.mahogany board is provided, into which 
broken crystals of quartz are inserted, and this serves to 
grate the root into a coarse meal, which is washed care¬ 
fully (the starch is partly removed, and settles in the 
water as tapioca), and is then placed in a long sack of 
basket-work, called very appropriately serpiente. This 
ingenious press is fastened at one end to a house-beam, 
while on a lever placed through the loop at the other end 
all the children of the family sit in turn, or together if 
they are small; and the squeezed mass is dexterously 
made afterwards into flat loaves about three feet in diam¬ 
eter, and not more than a quarter of an inch thick, dried, 
and then baked. The result is a wholesome and very 
nutritious bread, which keeps a long time and is capital 
on an excursion. Later on, when our own housekeeping 
was in order, we found it made excellent puddings, and 
was better than crackers in soup ; while in the woods 
it was' indispensable. It is also a capital diet in dys¬ 
pepsia, can be eaten in sea-sickness when all other food 
is rejected, and serves to fill out the bony outlines of an 
emaciated human frame better than anything else. The 
clean white. loaves can be easily exported, and are very 
