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Updated: May 4, 2025
From the town we procured rum, sugar, and tobacco, and the last is sold very dear, though not good for smoking, being too strong. We got also fowls and hogs, but the latter were scarce and dear; likewise maize, or Indian corn, bananas, plantains, guavas, lemons, oranges, and pine-apples are in great plenty; but they have no bread except cassada, which they call faranada pan, or bread of wood.
So opening the cloth we discovered some nice white flowery-looking stuff, which she declared was tapioca, and which we discovered made most excellent bread. We really voted this discovery of the cassada root quite a grand discovery, though I was always very fidgety about the poisonous milk in it. But the loaves made from the flower were delicious.
After performing this ceremony, of which Columbus himself could not foresee the consequences to the Indians, for he was very kind to them, he made them presents of trinkets and other trifles, with which they were greatly delighted, and brought him in return the fruits of their fields and groves, and a sort of bread called cassada, made from the root of the yuca; with whatever else their own simple mode of life might afford.
It is probable however that the poisonous quality of these nuts may lie in the juice, like that of the cassada of the West Indies, and that the pulp, when dried, may be not only wholesome but nutritious. The native women collect the nuts from the palms in the month of March, and, having placed them in some shallow pool of water, they leave them to soak for several days.
We departed from Juan Fernandez on the evening of the 6th October, having nothing to subsist upon except the smoked congers, one of which was allowed to each man for twenty-four hours; together with one cask of beef, four live hogs, which had fed all the time we were ashore on the putrid carcases of seals, and three or four bushels of cassada meal.
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