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This manioc meal is the staple food, the bread equivalent, all along the coast. As you pass along you are perpetually meeting with a new named food, fou-fou on the Leeward, kank on the Windward, m'vada in Corisco, ogooma in the Ogowe; but acquaintance with it demonstrates that it is all the same manioc.
One by one they rose to work, and in the slowest possible way were produced five oars, of which one was sprung, a ricketty rudder, a huge mast, and a sail composed half of matting and half of holes. At the last moment, the men found that they had no "chop;" a franc produced two bundles of sweet manioc, good travelling food, as it can be eaten raw, but about as nutritious as Norwegian bark.
For flavouring, cocoa-nut milk is poured over it, or it is mixed with cabbage, grease, nuts, roasted and ground, or occasionally with maggots. Besides this principal dish, sweet potatoes, manioc, bread-fruit, pineapples, bananas, etc., are eaten in season, and if the natives were less careless, they would never need to starve, as frequently happens. The men are not much disturbed by our arrival.
This square space, washed on its sides by the waters of the river and its tributary, was destined to be cleared, plowed, planted, and sown, and the following year fields of manioc, coffee-shrubs, sugar-canes, arrowroot, maize, and peanuts would occupy the ground so recently covered by the trees.
He took up the long fork it chattered against the pot as he seized it and, overcoming a momentary and inexplicable nausea, impaled the first piece of meat that rolled to the surface. There were yams also and a sort of dumpling made of manioc. When he had filled his plate he rose and turned suddenly; the woman and the cripple had stopped eating and were watching him.
Large plantations of maize, manioc, and tobacco are seen along both banks, which are enlivened by the frequent appearance of native houses imbosomed in dense shady groves, with little boys and girls playing about them. The banks are steep, the water having cut out its bed in dark red alluvial soil.
One part of the market was devoted to wood for the rafters and framework of houses, another to the sale of vegetables and fruits among which were sweet potatoes, manioc, beans, maize, peaches, bananas, mangoes, pine-apples, oranges, lemons, pumpkins, melons, grapes, Cape gooseberries, mulberries, guavas, pomegranates, and many others, besides bread-fruit and rice which last is the staple food of the people.
It is common to cut down cotton-trees as a nuisance, and cultivate beans, potatoes, and manioc sufficient only for their own consumption. I have the impression that cotton, which is deciduous in America, is perennial here; for the plants I saw in winter were not dead, though going by the name Algodao Americana, or American cotton.
Well kept roads radiating among vast plains clothed with giant trees, immense fields of manioc, magnificent forests of palms, cocoa-trees, mimosas, orange-trees, mango-trees such was the country whose perfumes mounted to the "Albatross," while many parrots and cardinals swarmed among the trees.
David told us that it was called cassava, as well as manioc, and that its scientific name was Jatropha manihot. After a few trials he contrived to manufacture a kind of starch, which I had often seen in England under the name of tapioca. He was delighted when he succeeded in producing it, and Kate at once made some very nice puddings from it, by mixing it with honey to give it flavour.
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