Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 285 of 406 - First - Home
This Yellow Paste Dried In The Sun, And Diluted In Water, Is
Taken In The Morning As A Kind Of Tea.
The beverage is bitter and
stomachic, but it appeared to me to have a very disagreeable taste.
On the banks of the Niger, and in a great part of the interior of
Africa, where salt is extremely rare, it is said of a rich man, "he is
so fortunate as to eat salt at his meals." This good fortune is not
too common in the interior of Guiana. The whites only, particularly
the soldiers of the little fort of San Carlos, know how to procure
pure salt, either from the coast of Caracas, or from Chita* by the Rio
Meta. (* North of Morocote, at the eastern declivity of the Cordillera
of New Grenada. The salt of the coasts, which the Indians call
yuquira, costs two piastres the almuda at San Carlos.) Here, as
throughout America, the Indians eat little meat, and consume scarcely
any salt. The chivi of Javita is a mixture of muriate of potash and of
soda, of caustic lime, and of several other earthy salts. The Indians
dissolve a few particles in water, fill with this solution a leaf of
heliconia folded in a conical form, and let drop a little, as from the
extremity of a filter, on their food.
On the 5th of May we set off, to follow on foot our canoe, which had
at length arrived, by the portage, at the Cano Pimichin. We had to
ford a great number of streams; and these passages require some
caution on account of the vipers with which the marshes abound. The
Indians pointed out to us on the moist clay the traces of the little
black bears so common on the banks of the Temi. They differ at least
in size from the Ursus americanus. The missionaries call them osso
carnicero, to distinguish them from the osso palmero or tamanoir
(Myrmecophaga jubata), and from the osso hormigero, or anteater
(tamandua). The flesh of these animals is good to eat; the first two
defend themselves by rising on their hind feet. The tamanoir of Buffon
is called uaraca by the Indians; it is irascible and courageous, which
is extraordinary in an animal without teeth. We found, as we advanced,
some vistas in the forest, which appeared to us the richer, as it
became more accessible. We here gathered some new species of coffee
(the American tribe, with flowers in panicles, forms probably a
particular genus); the Galega piscatorum, of which the Indians make
use, as they do of jacquinia, and of a composite plant of the Rio
Temi, as a kind of barbasco, to intoxicate fish; and finally, the
liana, known in those countries by the name of vejuco de mavacure,
which yields the famous curare poison. It is neither a phyllanthus,
nor a coriaria, as M. Willdenouw conjectured, but, as M. Kunth's
researches show, very probably a strychnos. We shall have occasion,
farther on, to speak of this venomous substance, which is an important
object of trade among the savages.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 285 of 406
Words from 147851 to 148366
of 211397