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This personal question disposed of, he spoke of the pilgrimage before him, and informed me in confidence that he intended preparing a quantity of smoke-dried meat and packing it in a bag, with a layer of cassava bread, dried pumpkin slips, and such innocent trifles to conceal it from Rima's keen sight and delicate nostrils.
We had not got far when we met several slaves bringing us a number of fowls, some bunches of plantains, and baskets of cassava. These they placed at our feet with a message from the chief to say that we were welcome, for he had heard of our brave deeds.
So little do they care for clothing, that even the females wear only a small piece of the bark of a tree, or the net-like covering of the young leaf of the cocoanut or cabbage palm; while their appearance is squalid in the extreme. However, they cultivate cassava and other vegetables on the drier lands bordering the river.
The care of our animals occupied us a great part of the morning, then we prepared our cassava, and baked our cakes on iron plates. Though we had a glazed door to our hut, the gloominess of the weather, and the obscurity caused by the vast boughs of the tree, made night come on early. We then lighted a candle, fixed in a gourd on the table, round which we were all assembled.
They have to grate the cassava before it is pressed preparatory to baking; and those Indians who are too far in the wilds to procure graters from the white men make use of a flat piece of wood studded with sharp stones. They have no cows, horses, mules, goats, sheep or asses. The men hunt and fish, and the women work in the provision- ground and cook their victuals.
Good store of meat with cakes of very excellent bread of cassava. 1 horse with furniture for same, 5 cloaks, something worn. 3 pair of boots, very serviceable. 1 tinder box. 1 coat. I waked to a scream, a fierce trampling, an awful snarling, this drowned in the roar of a gun, and started up to see a glitter of darting steel that Sir Richard sought to parry with his smoking weapon.
The leaves that are not unfolded are united with the young stem, and we measured cylinders of six feet long and five inches in diameter. The Indians throughout the Upper Orinoco fry fish, dry them in the sun, and reduce them to powder without separating the bones. I have seen masses of fifty or sixty pounds of this flour, which resembles that of cassava.
He grew his own tobacco, tea, peanuts, oranges, figs, pineapples, bananas; he fattened his cattle and hogs on his own cassava and the abundant wild grasses; his flocks of sheep "cut their own fodder," and the wool and mutton was all clear profit. This "Cracker" family was the happiest and most independent I ever saw on earth.
This village was quite invisible from the river, being approached by means of one of those small, short, winding creeks that so frequently occur on the South American rivers, and the existence of which seems so difficult to account for; but when, upon the canoes rounding a bend, the place swung into view, it was seen to be of quite considerable extent, consisting of fully one hundred palm-leaf huts standing in an open glade of about two hundred acres in extent, part of which was under cultivation, being planted, in almost equal proportion, with bananas, yams, and cassava.
When the cakes of cassava were prepared, Father Zea, whose fever seemed rather to sharpen than to enfeeble his appetite, ordered a little bag to be brought to him filled with smoked vachacos. He mixed these bruised insects with flour of cassava, which he pressed us to taste. It somewhat resembled rancid butter mixed with crumb of bread.
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