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Behind the buildings was a small piece of ground cleared from the forest, and planted with fruit trees orange, lemon, genipapa, goyava, and others; and beyond this, a broad path through a neglected plantation of coffee and cacao, led to several large sheds, where the farinha, or mandioca meal, was manufactured.
A long flexible cylinder made of the peel of a marantaceous plant, plaited into the proper form, hung suspended from a beam; it is in this that the pulp of the mandioca is pressed, and from it the juice, which is of a highly poisonous nature, although the pulp is wholesome food, runs into pans placed beneath to receive it.
According to Jose, who had kept himself sober, and was alarmed at the other's violent conduct, the owner of the house and Pinto had spent the greater part of the night together, drinking aguardente de beiju, a spirit distilled from the mandioca root.
Other women go around with large wicker trays on their heads, selling chipa, the native bread, made from Indian corn, or mandioca root, the staple food of the country. Wheat is not grown in Paraguay, and any flour used is imported. These daughters of Eve often wear nothing more than a robe- de-chambre, and invariably smoke cigars six or eight inches long.
There was a kind of festival going on, and the people fuddled themselves with cashiri, an intoxicating drink invented by the Indians. It is made by soaking mandioca cakes in water until fermentation takes place, and tastes like new beer. Being unable to obtain men, Mr. Leavens now gave up his project of ascending the river as far as the Araguaya.
A short time after reaching Cayenne, he shipped in a schooner that was going to Para, or rather the island of Marajo, for a cargo of cattle. He had now fixed himself, after all his wanderings, in a healthy and fertile little nook on the banks of a rivulet near Caripi, built himself a log-hut, and planted a large patch of mandioca and Indian corn.
These buildings stand on a little hill, overlooking the cultivated ground, and surrounded on every side by a wall of dark green luxuriant forest. 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 cassava is likewise cultivated in great quantity.
Anything, everything, is eaten for food, and a roasted serpent or boiled fox is equally relished. During my stay among them I ceased to ask of what the mess was composed; each dish was worse than the former. Among the first dishes I had were mandioca root, a black carrion bird, goat's meat, and fox's head.
To these we used a sauce in the form of a yellow paste, quite new to me, called Arube, which is made of the poisonous juice of the mandioca root, boiled down before the starch or tapioca is precipitated, and seasoned with capsicum peppers. It is kept in stone bottles several weeks before using, and is a most appetising relish to fish.
This singular nest is built of clay, and is as hard as stone pedra; while it is the shape of the mandioca oven forno in which the country people prepare their farina. It is about a foot in diameter, and stands edgewise upon the branch or crotch of a tree. Among the smaller birds are bright tanagers, and a species resembling the canary.
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