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"How can it help? There's a slow poison in writing one way when you believe another." "And that's part of the dirt-eating?" "Well, yes. Not so obvious as some of the other kinds. Those hurt your pride, mostly. This kind hurts your self-respect." "But where does it get you, all this business?" asked Banneker reverting to his first query. "I'm fifty-two years old," replied Edmonds quietly.
The deaths came from diseases brought from Africa, such as the yaws which was similar to syphilis; from debilities and maladies acquired on the voyage; from the change of climate and food; from exposure incurred in running away; from morbid habits such as dirt-eating; and from accident, manslaughter and suicide.
I also found some traces of this vitiated appetite among the Guamos; and between the confluence of the Meta and the Apure, where everybody speaks of dirt-eating as of a thing anciently known. I shall here confine myself to an account of what we ourselves saw or heard from the missionary, who had been doomed to live for twelve years among the savage and turbulent tribe of the Ottomacs.
At this price of bitter humiliation, nay, of something more real than mere humiliation, Alfieri bought the privilege of frequenting the palace of Cardinal York. But it was a privilege for which you could not pay once and for all; its price was a black-mail of humbugging, and wheedling, and dirt-eating.
Properly speaking, dirt-eating should be called geophagism; it is common in the Antilles and South America, among the low classes, and is seen in the negroes and poorest classes of some portions of the Southern United States. It has also been reported from Java, China, Japan, and is said to have been seen in Spain and Portugal. Peat-eating or bog-eating is still seen in some parts of Ireland.
At these they lick up quantities of earth along with the salt efflorescence, until vast hollows are formed in the earth, termed, from this circumstance, salt "licks." The consequence of this "dirt-eating" is, that the excrement of the animal comes forth in hard pellets; and by seeing this, the hunters can always tell when they are in the neighbourhood of a "lick."
As he grew old, Alfieri seems to have lost that power, nay that irresistible desire, of speaking the truth and the whole truth which made him record with burning shame the caress of Pius VI. Perhaps, on the other hand, Alfieri, who, after all, was but a sorry mixture of an ancient Roman and a man of the eighteenth century, thought that a certain amount of baseness and dirt-eating, quite degrading in a man, might be permitted to a woman, even to the lady of his thoughts.
The habit of dirt eating or clay-eating, called pica, is well authenticated in many countries. The Ephemerides contains mention of it; Hunter speaks of the blacks who eat potters' clay; Bartholinus describes dirt-eating as does also a Castro.
Then in the spring of 1794 the heavy mortality began. By 1795, however, the epidemic had passed. Of the five deaths of the new negroes that year, two were attributed to dirt-eating, one to yaws, and two to ulcers, probably caused by yaws. The three years of the seasoning period were now ended, with about three-fourths of the number imported still alive.
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