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Updated: May 4, 2025
The chief food of the lower orders and slaves is yams and the jatropha, or cassada, of which there are two species commonly known, the jatropha janipha, and the jatropha manihot. The former contains a strong vegetable poison, which is destroyed by boiling; the latter is merely slightly narcotic in its effects, and both are easily converted into wholesome food.
These articles, with the different preparations of arrow-root and cassada, form a lucrative branch of trade, which is mostly in the hands of the colored people.
In one particular enclosure, surrounded by a fence of papyrus, thirty of these huts served us dwellings for the chief's slaves, in another group lived his wives, and a "tembe," still larger and higher, was half hidden in a plantation of cassada. Such was the residence of the King of Kazounde, a man of fifty named Moini Loungga; and already almost deprived of the power of his predecessors.
At daylight saw Prince's Island, towards which we continued to make our course. At eight came to anchor in Port Antonio, where we found Lieutenant Robinson with the captured brigantine, and also the Vengeance, a Brazilian brigantine on a slaving voyage, which had put in for Cassada root, or Mandioc, upon which these people principally feed their slaves.
When we were ready to depart, all the villagers came to the beach, with whatever commodities they were disposed to offer for sale; a man carrying a squealing pig upon his shoulders; women with fruits and fowls; girls with heavy bunches of bananas or bundles of cassada on their heads; and boys, with perhaps a single egg.
Yams, a nutritious substance, known in the West Indies. Cassada or cassava, a root, of a pleasant taste when roasted or boiled, and makes an excellent cake, superior in whiteness to flour. Papaw, of a deep green in its growth, but yellqw when ripe, and is an excellent dish when boiled; its leaves are frequently used by the natives for soap; ropes are made of the bark.
Our sea-stock, besides the small quantity of beef and cassada flour formerly mentioned, consisted of 2300 eels cured in smoke, weighing one with another about a pound each, together with about sixty gallons of seal-oil, in which to fry them.
The chief produce of this part of the country is coffee. Each tree is supposed to yield annually, on an average, two pounds; but some give as much as eight. Mandioca or cassada is likewise cultivated in great quantity.
These inter-tribal wars were once almost constant, and their prevention requires the utmost vigilance of the Liberian authorities. The natives harvest rice and cassada; supply the coasting trader's demand for palm-oil; raise tobacco; procure salt by evaporating sea-water; engage in hunting and fishing.
Our boat also was launched on the 9th September; and our bark being now in a fair way of being completed, it remained to consider what provisions we could get to support us during our voyage, all our stock being one cask of beef, five or six bushels of farina de poa, or cassada flour, and four or five live hogs.
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