These Berries Are Much Esteemed By The Natives,
Who Convert Them Into A Sort Of Bread, By Exposing Them For Some Days To
The Sun, And Afterwards Pounding Them Gently In A Wooden Mortar, Until
The Farinaceous Part Of The Berry Is Separated From The Stone.
This meal
is then mixed with a little water, and formed into cakes; which, when
dried in the sun, resemble in colour and flavour the sweetest
gingerbread.
The stones are afterwards put into a vessel of water, and
shaken about so as to separate the meal which may still adhere to them;
this communicates a sweet and agreeable taste to the water, and, with the
addition of a little pounded millet, forms a pleasant gruel called
_fondi_, which is the common breakfast in many parts of Ludamar, during
the months of February and March. The fruit is collected by spreading a
cloth upon the ground, and beating, the branches with a stick.
The lotus is very common in all the kingdoms which I visited; but is
found in the greatest plenty on the sandy soil of Kaarta, Ludamar, and
the northern parts of Bambarra, where it is one of the most common shrubs
of the country. I had observed the same species at Gambia. The leaves of
the desert shrub are, however, much smaller; and more resembling, in that
particular, those represented in the engraving given by Desfontaines, in
the Memoires de l'Academie Royale des Sciences, 1788, p. 443.
As this shrub is found in Tunis, and also in the Negro kingdoms, and as
it furnishes the natives of the latter with a food resembling bread, and
also with a sweet liquor, which is much relished by them, there can be
little doubt of its being the lotus mentioned by Pliny as the food of
the Lybian Lotophagi.
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