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Updated: May 15, 2025
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.
It was raining heavily it rained most of the time and a few minutes previously I had noticed the cacique's two wives, with three or four other young women, going out to the mandioc fields. It was a picturesque group. The women were all mothers, and each carried a nursing child. They wore loin-cloths or short skirts.
They entered one house and danced in a ring around the cooking- fire in the middle of the earth floor; I was told that they were then reciting the deeds of mighty hunters and describing how they brought in the game. They drank freely from gourds and pannikins of a fermented drink made from mandioc which were brought out to them.
When he has nothing else he eats the farina, as it is called, by the handful. It is seldom cooked. The small mandioc tubers when boiled are very good and are used instead of potatoes. Native beans are nutritious and form one of the chief foods. In the field the native cook wastes much time.
The principal plantations were mandioc and coffee, and there was also a small quantity of cocoa; the coffee is rather celebrated for its flavour and quality. The prices vary a good deal, but we found the average from eight to twelve pounds for a dollar.
The chief dependence of the people is upon mandioc, manioc, or cassava, which the natives accept as a direct gift from the prophet Sunè. This, however, is not the place to dwell upon the endless variety of trees and the fauna and flora of that extraordinary country. Major Starland left his rifle in charge of Captain Guzman, and, with his revolver at command, strolled up the main street.
In the lower, the fierce jaguar ranges amidst its forests of graceful palm-trees, the terrible alligator dwells on the banks of its streams, and the anaconda watches for its prey; while bananas, yams, mandioc, and all the fruits of a tropical clime, attain perfection.
One seemed sick; he was thin, and his back was scarred with marks of the grub of the loathsome berni fly. Indeed, all of them showed scars, chiefly from insect wounds. But the other two were in good condition, and, although they ate greedily of the food offered them, they had with them a big mandioc cake, some honey, and a little fish.
We used to fish for the latter variety in the quiet pools while allowing the canoe to drift, and always saved some of the fish as bait for the big fellows. We fished for the pacu as the native does, kneading a ball of mandioc farina with water and placing it on the hook as bait.
For four days there were no rapids we could not run without unloading. Then, on the 19th, we got a canoe from Senhor Barboso. He was a most kind and hospitable man, who also gave us a duck and a chicken and some mandioc and six pounds of rice, and would take no payment; he lived in a roomy house with his dusky, cigar-smoking wife and his many children.
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