Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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During
The Period Of These Inundations, Which Last Two Or Three Months, The
Ottomacs Swallow A Prodigious Quantity Of Earth.
We found heaps of
earth-balls in their huts, piled up in pyramids three or four feet
high.
These balls were five or six inches in diameter. The earth which
the Ottomacs eat is a very fine and unctuous clay of a yellowish grey
colour; and, when being slightly baked at the fire, the hardened crust
has a tint inclining to red, owing to the oxide of iron which is
mingled with it. We brought away some of this earth, which we took
from the winter-provision of the Indians; and it is a mistake to
suppose that it is steatitic, and that it contains magnesia. Vauquelin
did not discover any traces of that substance in it but he found that
it contained more silex than alumina, and three or four per cent of
lime.
The Ottomacs do not eat every kind of clay indifferently; they choose
the alluvial beds or strata, which contain the most unctuous earth,
and the smoothest to the touch. I inquired of the missionary whether
the moistened clay were made to undergo that peculiar decomposition
which is indicated by a disengagement of carbonic acid and
sulphuretted hydrogen, and which is designated in every language by
the term of putrefaction; but he assured us that the natives neither
cause the clay to rot, nor do they mingle it with flour of maize, oil
of turtle's eggs, or fat of the crocodile. We ourselves examined, both
at the Orinoco and after our return to Paris, the balls of earth which
we brought away with us, and found no trace of the mixture of any
organic substance, whether oily or farinaceous. The savage regards
every thing as nourishing that appeases hunger: when, therefore, you
inquire of an Ottomac on what he subsists during the two months when
the river is at its highest flood he shows you his balls of clayey
earth. This he calls his principal food at the period when he can
seldom procure a lizard, a root of fern, or a dead fish swimming at
the surface of the water. If necessity force the Indians to eat earth
during two months (and from three quarters to five quarters of a pound
in twenty-four hours), he eats it from choice during the rest of the
year. Every day in the season of drought, when fishing is most
abundant, he scrapes his balls of poya, and mingles a little clay with
his other aliment. It is most surprising that the Ottomacs do not
become lean by swallowing such quantities of earth: they are, on the
contrary, extremely robust. The missionary Fray Ramon Bueno asserts
that he never remarked any alteration in the health of the natives at
the period of the great risings of the Orinoco.
The Ottomacs during some months eat daily three-quarters of a pound of
clay slightly hardened by fire, but which they moisten before
swallowing it.
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