715 
I believe Mr. Dorsett and Mr. Shamel are writing you 
all about the oranges, so it will be better for me to con- 
fine my attention to other things in this letter. While 
as yet we have had practically no time to investigate 
fruits and food plants of this region, we have made a few 
general observations, and hope later on to go into the 
subject more thoroughly. In coming to a new country, I am 
always interested in seeing what the people eat; here we 
find several new dishes, one of which seems to be almost 
peculiar in this locality, and is, to my notion, an excel- 
lent thing. This is Vatapa, said to have come over here 
with the blacks from Africa. The name itself is African, 
according to our authorities. Vatapa has as one of its 
principal ingredients the oil of the dende palm, Elaeis 
guineensis . It also contains mandioca flour, at times pea- 
nuts or cashew nuts, and, I imagine, almost anything else 
one happens to have about the house. Vatapa seems to be 
analogous to Indian curry; it is a thick sauce served with 
fried fish, dried shrimps, beef, chicken, or Gloucester 
codfish, a standard article in these parts. To my taste 
it is as far ahead of curry as good American pie i's of an 
English jam tart, and that is a long way, as Mr. Dorsett 
will testify. 
Mandioca flour is a standard article of diet. In the 
market there are many venders with huge baskets of a paste 
made from mandioca flour called cariman (a Tupi word) 
which seems to be a staple with the poorer classes. Then 
there is a coarser meal, something on the order of corn 
meal, which seems to be a favorite with everyone. It is 
browned in a pan, with a little butter, and then becomes 
farofa, served with meats, and used to stuff turkeys in 
place of our sage dressing. 
Someone ought to start a campaign in Florida to en- 
courage the use of tropical fruits for sherbets and cool- 
ing drinks. They have this down to a fine art here. We 
have already tried five kinds of sherbets, and they are 
all good. They even use the avocado for this purpose; it 
makes a rather peculiar sherbet, of a light green color 
and very peculiar flavor. Milk Is 43 cents a quart, so 
they do not go in very strong for Ice cream, all the sher- 
bets we have tried being made with sugar and water only. 
The mango makes an excellent one; this should certainly be 
used in Florida. Pitanga, Eugenia, uniflora, is also good, 
and the jelly made from this fruit is excellent. The 
pitanga is very common as a hedge plant around Bahia, and 
makes a most beautiful and compact hedge. We hope to get 
enough seeds to enable plants to be distributed for plant- 
ing a few hedges in Florida and California. 
