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The tender flesh of the breast is partially minced with farinha, and the breast shell then roasted over the fire, making a very pleasant dish. Steaks cut from the breast and cooked with the fat form another palatable dish. Large sausages are made of the thick- coated stomach, which is filled with minced meat and boiled. The quarters cooked in a kettle of Tucupi sauce form another variety of food.

It is generally made as a liquid, but the Juri and Miranha tribes on the Japura make it up in the form of a black paste by a mode of preparation I could not learn; it is then called Tucupi-pixuna, or black Tucupi I have seen the Indians on the Tapajos, where fish is scarce, season Tucupi with Sauba ants.

They have an oily taste; the men ate them raw, beaten up with farinha, mixing a pinch of salt in the mess; I could only do with them when mixed with Tucupi sauce, of which we had a large jar full always ready to temper unsavoury morsels.

They make broad-mouthed jars for Tucupi sauce, caysuma or mandioca beer, capable of holding twenty or more gallons, ornamenting them outside with crossed diagonal streaks of various colours. They afford good examples of the mechanical ability of these Indians. The dead bodies of their chiefs are interred, the knees doubled up, in large jars under the floors of their huts.

Tucupi, another sauce made also from mandioca juice, is much more common in the interior of the country than Arube. This is made by boiling or heating the pure liquid, after the tapioca has been separated, daily for several days in succession, and seasoning it with peppers and small fishes; when old, it has the taste of essence of anchovies.

Although there is a large quantity of cattle in the neighbourhood of the town, and pasture is abundant all the year round, beef can be had only when a beast is killed by accident. The most frequent cause of death is poisoning by drinking raw Tucupi, the juice of the mandioca root.

They boil the meat in earthenware kettles filled with Tucupi sauce, and eat it with beiju, or mandioca-cakes. The women are not allowed to taste of the meat, but forced to content themselves with sopping pieces of cake in the liquor.