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The amylaceous matter of corn, the object of religious veneration among so many nations, ancient and modern, is diffused in the seeds, and deposited in the roots of vegetables; milk, which serves as an aliment, appears to us exclusively the produce of animal organization.
That amylaceous fecula which the seeds of the cereal plants furnish in all its purity, is found united with an acrid and sometimes even poisonous juice, in the roots of the arums, the Tacca pinnatifida, and the Jatropha manihot. The savage of America, like the savage of the South Sea islands, has learned to dulcify the fecula, by pressing and separating it from its juice.
Amylaceous and saccharine substances, sometimes fish and the fat of turtles' eggs, supply the place of food drawn from the first two classes of the animal kingdom, those of quadrupeds and birds. We found the bed of the river, to the length of six hundred toises, full of granite rocks. Here is what is called the Raudal de Cariven. We passed through channels that were not five feet broad.
The produce of the bread-fruit tree can no more be considered as bread than plantains before the state of maturity, or the tuberous and amylaceous roots of the cassava, the dioscorea, the Convolvulus batatas, and the potato. The milk of the cow-tree contains, on the contrary, a caseous matter, like the milk of mammiferous animals.
Thus the Maypures carry on a trade of barter with the little loaves of puruma, which is a vegetable fecula, dried in the manner of indigo, and yielding a very permanent yellow colour. The chemistry of the savage is reduced to the preparation of pigments, that of poisons, and the dulcification of the amylaceous roots, which the aroides and the euphorbiaceous plants afford.
I have already observed that neither the present missionary of Uruana, nor Fray Juan Gonzales, who lived long in those countries, knew anything of this mixture of animal and vegetable substances with the poya. 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.
These were perhaps the names of some tribes, into which the great Guaraonese nation was divided. The flour bears the name of yuruma: I have eaten it at the town of St. By interrupting the blossoming, nature is obliged to carry elsewhere the saccharine or amylaceous matter, which would accumulate in the flowers of the maguey and in the fruit of the Mauritia.
These wines, liquors and flour are consumed by the opulent part of the nation. The cereals of the United States have become articles of absolute necessity in a zone where maize, manioc and bananas were long preferred to every other amylaceous food.
Amylaceous and saccharine substances are largely manufactured, even by the highest animals; cellulose is widespread as a constituent of the skeletons of the lower animals; and it is probable that amyloid substances are universally present in the animal organism, though not in the precise form of starch.
As we ourselves experienced in coming north, they also cause a weakness of vision, which occurs in the case of animals fed on pure gluten or amylaceous matter only. I now discovered that when these starchy substances are eaten along with a proportion of ground-nuts, which contain a considerable quantity of oil, no injurious effects follow.
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