第138章

Cakes are made of the half-roasted meal, but they become sour in a very few hours.A superior kind of meal is manufactured at Ega of the sweet mandioca (Manihot Aypi); it is generally made with a mixture of the starch of the root and is therefore a much more wholesome article of food than the ordinary sort which, on the Amazons, is made of the pulp after the starch has been extracted by soaking in water.When we could get neither bread nor biscuit, I found tapioca soaked in coffee the best native substitute.We were seldom without butter, as every canoe brought one or two casks on each return voyage from Para, where it is imported in considerable quantity from Liverpool.We obtained tea in the same way; it being served as a fashionable luxury at wedding and christening parties; the people were at first strangers to this article, for they used to stew it in a saucepan, mixing it up with coarse raw sugar, and stirring it with a spoon.Sometimes we had milk, but this was only when a cow calved; the yield from each cow was very small, and lasted only for a few weeks in each case, although the pasture is good, and the animals are sleek and fat.Fruit of the ordinary tropical sorts could generally be had.

I was quite surprised at the variety of the wild kinds, and of the delicious flavour of some of them.Many of these are utterly unknown in the regions nearer the Atlantic, being the peculiar productions of this highly favoured, and little known, interior country.Some have been planted by the natives in their clearings.The best was the Jabuti-puhe, or tortoise-foot; a scaled fruit probably of the Anonaceous order.It is about the size of an ordinary apple; when ripe the rind is moderately thin, and encloses, with the seeds, a quantity of custardy pulp of a very rich flavour.Next to this stands the Cuma (Collophora sp.)of which there are two species, not unlike in appearance, small round Dears-- but the rind is rather hard, and contains a gummy milk, and the pulpy part is almost as delicious as that of the Jabuti-puhe.The Cuma tree is of moderate height, and grows rather plentifully in the more elevated and drier situations.Athird kind is the Pama, which is a stone fruit, similar in colour and appearance to the cherry but of oblong shape.The tree is one of the loftiest in the forest, and has never, I believe, been selected for cultivation.To get at the fruit the natives are obliged to climb to the height of about a hundred feet, and cut off the heavily laden branches.I have already mentioned the Umari and the Wishi: both these are now cultivated.The fatty, bitter pulp which surrounds the large stony seeds of these fruits is eaten mixed with farinha, and is very nourishing.Another cultivated fruit is the Puruma (Puruma cecropiaefolia, Martius), a round juicy berry, growing in large bunches and resembling grapes in taste.Another smaller kind, called Puruma-i, grows wild in the forest close to Ega, and has not yet been planted.

The most singular of all these fruits is the Uiki, which is of oblong shape, and grows apparently crosswise on the end of its stalk.When ripe, the thick green rind opens by a natural cleft across the middle, and discloses an oval seed the size of a damascene plum, but of a vivid crimson colour.This bright hue belongs to a thin coating of pulp which, when the seeds are mixed in a plate of stewed bananas, gives to the mess a pleasant rosy tint, and a rich creamy taste and consistence.Mingua (porridge)of bananas flavoured and coloured with Uiki is a favourite dish at Ega.The fruit, like most of the others here mentioned, ripens in January.Many smaller fruits such as Wajuru (probably a species of Achras), the size of a gooseberry, which grows singly and contains a sweet gelatinous pulp, enclosing two large, shining black seeds; Cashipari-arapaa, an oblong scarlet berry;two kinds of Bacuri, the Bacuri-siuma and the B.curua, sour fruits of a bright lemon colour when ripe, and a great number of others, are of less importance as articles of food.

The celebrated "Peach palm," Pupunha of the Tupi nations (Guilielma speciosa), is a common tree at Ega.The name, Isuppose, is in allusion to the colour of the fruit, and not to its flavour, for it is dry and mealy, and in taste may be compared to a mixture of chestnuts and cheese.Vultures devour it eagerly, and come in quarrelsome flocks to the trees when it is ripe.Dogs will also eat it: I do not recollect seeing cats do the same, although they go voluntarily to the woods to eat Tucuma, another kind of palm fruit.The tree, as it grows in clusters beside the palm-thatched huts, is a noble ornament, being, when full grown, from fifty to sixty feet in height and often as straight as a scaffold-pole.A bunch of fruit when ripe is a load for a strong man, and each tree bears several of them.

The Pupunha grows wild nowhere on the Amazons.It is one of those few vegetable productions (including three kinds of mandioca and the American species of banana) which the Indians have cultivated from time immemorial, and brought with them in their original migration to Brazil.It is only, however, the more advanced tribes who have kept up the cultivation.The superiority of the fruit on the Solimoens to that grown on the Lower Amazons and in the neighbourhood of Para is very striking.At Ega it is generally as large as a full-sized peach, and when boiled, almost as mealy as a potato; while at Para it is no bigger than a walnut, and the pulp is fibrous.Bunches of sterile or seedless fruits sometimes occur in both districts.It is one of the principal articles of food at Ega when in season, and is boiled and eaten with treacle or salt.A dozen of the seedless fruits makes a good nourishing meal for a grown-up person.It is the general belief that there is more nutriment in Pupunha than in fish or Vacca marina.